Onsite will be organising all the tour logistics including the provision of a 53-foot transportable dental practice - whilst affiliated dental professionals will be providing free oral annual health checks, dental examinations, dental cleaning as well as systemic health education.
Arrangements have already been made with many leading UK companies and the Onsite touring practice will visit large, single and multi-tenant business parks throughout the UK - with the potential to treat 81,700 employees. The tour kicks off in London on April 13, visits twelve cities and will culminate in Glasgow in September 2015.
The need for such a service is evident. Research shows that only 21 per cent of the UK population visit the dentist annually. However, it does not appear that cost is the deterrent; according to The British Dental Health Foundation, whilst everyone in the UK is eligible for free dental check-ups, only 61 per cent of the population has a dentist.
Instead, time and convenience appear to be the major factors affecting people’s decision. Many working professionals are simply unable to make time to routinely visit the dentist. To counter this, Onsite plans to provide education on the correlations between oral and general health problems to encourage a greater level of awareness of the importance of dental check-ups.
The founders of Onsite Dental have worked in this way to improve workforce health and productivity at companies in the US since1998 and in Denmark since 2010; the service was piloted with huge success in Ireland in 2014. The model has been proven and has been taken up by some of the world’s leading companies including Facebook, Sony, Yahoo and many other household names.
The upcoming mobile dental tour of the UK will offer free dental examinations, dental cleanings, as well as general health screenings for systemic issues relating to dental health such as oral cancer. Employees will also be able to opt for additional services including the most contemporary aesthetic and restorative treatments including Invisalign. Onsite Dental is partnering with Align Technology and is engaging with Invisalign providers to run treatment consultations throughout the tour. The tour is also being used as a vehicle to introduce Cerezen, a new FDA-approved in-ear device for the treatment of tempro-mandibular joint disorder, which is being launched in the UK in April 2015.
Following the mobile tour, interested workplaces can continue ongoing care with the local dentists via Onsite’s innovative ‘Pop-Up Dental Centres’ which are set up within the business’ premises or connect them back to a traditional dental practice nearby.
The Onsite tour is being supported by the Dental Health Foundation, and Nigel Carter, OBE, who is chairman of the charity, commented “The Foundation has a remit to encourage and support occupational dental health and we are delightedthat the Onsite tour is taking dentistry to the workplace in such an inspired and engaging way.”
The touring dental practice is an ingenious construction which concertinas out from a 53 ft pantechnicon to become a three roomed dental practice – as well as providing space for a waiting room and educational area – which complies with all CQC dental regulations. It can be set up in a car park and plugged-and-plumbed-in overnight to be up and running within hours of arrival on site.
Onsite Dental is a win-win for organisations and their employees. Patients are provided with high quality dental care by a local dentist at the most convenient location for them – their workplace, saving both them and their employer time. Whilst forward looking companies are able to offer dentistry at the workplace to care for their employees, and increase productivity because they don’t lose them for the day when they take time off to visit the dentist – or because of systemic health issues relating to their oral health.
Marion Martin, who is responsible for corporate health & safety at Aer Lingus, where the service was piloted, is an early Onsite Dental advocate. She described her positive impression of the workplace service: “We recently launched Onsite Dental in our Dublin offices and it was a great success in terms of employee engagement, feedback and operation”.
Meanwhile Dave Butler, a maintenance and engineering employee at Aer Lingus was also an early enthusiast: "Having avoided a dentist visit for way too long, it was great to get back on track by bringing the dentist to me instead! My Onsite Dental visit was fast, efficient and very convenient and I would do it again."
The Onsite service is equally beneficial for the dental community as it provides an opportunity for dentists in the area to expand their practices and extend their patient bases by providing their services on a sessional basis. This is because the Onsite Dental model is not to employ all the dental professionals to staff the mobile units, but rather offers it to local providers to use as satellite sites for their practices. This enables affiliated dentists and clinical staff to focus on their core strengths providing clinical care while Onsite Dental handles all the back-office administration and workplace relations. Onsite Dental is currently actively seeking dental professionals who are keen to partner with them to provide ongoing dental care at workplaces. It is reaching out to find additional clinical teammates including Dentists, Dental Nurses or Dental Hygienists.
Onsite Dental draws up plans with each company to publicise the presence of the clinics in a variety of ways; Onsite Dental provide information for intranets, websites, notice boards, social media, and hold pre-visit ‘exhibitions’ in the company foyer or canteen, all of which are designed to encourage a high level of take up by employees.
Onsite Dental also offers customisable and flexible dental plans which are tailored to fit the specific needs of the workplace and its employees. The service can be offered at a cost-neutral basis for the workplaces where there is no fee to the company and individual employees simply pay on a per-treatment basis. However other companies see the service as an opportunity to provide the initial screening as a health benefit for their staff and cover some of the outlay.
For more information visit www.onsiteservice.com/tour