Frequently Asked Questions

practiceplan is not like other dental schemes. With our support you can create your own dental plan, establish a practice identity, market your own business to the patient and enjoy clinical freedom. By establishing your own successful plan, you are ensuring a regular monthly income and earning extra income for extra work. practiceplan does not have a brand name to market to your patients.

Quite simply, practiceplan has the finest reputation and has consistently delivered quality in everything they do. It is because the concept is based on sound financial planning and practiceplan delivers exceptional training and support, that they provide a winning formula. We are a company committed to excellence, an investor in people and a caring and sociable team.

Patients only ever pay for the services they receive and dentists are always paid for the services they provide. The support provided in training and marketing and the fact that it is the dentist’s own plan means full practice commitment. There are no complicated bandings or chartings, all patients can join the scheme and they all pay the same. The scheme belongs to the practice and is personalised to reflect the practice’s own identity and image. This, together with full business and marketing support ensures that practiceplan provides a service that will help you make the most of private practice.

No it’s not. practiceplan does not believe in (all inclusive) capitation as an equitable solution to the funding of dental treatment. Where they have undertaken conversions from capitation schemes to maintenance, they have always been able to introduce a simpler and fairer system. They have taken over the administration of capitation schemes but in most circumstances, the practice will always introduce their own maintenance scheme for all new patients. Your membership scheme means you get paid for your time and the patient gets what they pay for – there are no losers, only winners.
We are prepared to take over the administration of your existing capitation scheme if you are happy with capitation. Even then the scheme is branded as your own and we will prepare personalised marketing material.

The plan is based on sound financial planning. Great care is taken to establish the hourly rate required by the practice, not only to meet surgery expenses but also personal expenditure. Through consultation we help you to decide upon a monthly fee which covers the use of the surgery time. All too often dentists give away time (for example, examinations) and then charge more for surgical work. Once a realistic monthly fee has been established, you can offer discounted treatment for any work over and above that covered in the plan. Patients are offered a wider choice of treatments at affordable prices. Your hourly rate is used as the basis to help formulate your fee list.

Typically, when dealing with an NHS conversion, the practice will need to lose patients in order to provide a viable private practice. This allows more time per patient and enables the practice to offer an excellent private service.

This will depend on the circumstances at each practice. Whichever way the dentist wishes to proceed can be accommodated. practiceplan will advise and give appropriate support. However, if a practice decides to move to private dentistry, there is strong evidence that the most successful conversions are those that decide on a date for conversion and mail all their patients as one group with the appropriate information. There is a service that supports the practice in this exercise, greatly reducing the administration for the dental team during this busy and often stressful time

Absolutely none! One of the main advantages for the dentist who implements Practice Plan is that the dentist has complete clinical freedom. This is particularly relevant when signing patients on to the plan as there are no complicated chartings, bandings or requirements for clinical fitness. The dentist gets paid for extra work and, consequently, needs not be concerned about ‘supervised neglect’.

practiceplan helps you design a personalised brochure which incorporates your practice colours, logo and plan details. If required, we will help you write an informative letter to your patients. We offer marketing advice and can recommend ideas to approach new patients and other target groups. We provide generic practice posters and bespoke patient newsletters, referral cards, ideas for promoting your practice and a design service for advertisements. The practiceplan team are always available to offer help and advice. Read more about the marketing support we can offer here.

practiceplan, as administrators of the dental plan and Registration and Insurance Scheme believe peace of mind is important. Therefore, the worldwide dental trauma and emergency callout insurance ensures your patients are not vulnerable at a time of accident or emergency, which compliments the plans and RISs primary focus being preventative dental care.

The current details per incident in brief are as follows.

Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority for the conduct of insurance mediation activities.

*Details above are correct for all patients joining the policy after 1st Feb 2007

Individual dentists set their own fees and the patient pays for the level of service provided, usually based on maintenance. A dentist can have more than one plan if they wish (based on number of exams, number of hygiene visits, length of appointment etc), however, the important feature is that all patients pay the same for the same category and there is no ‘cross-subsidy’ within the practice.

It couldn’t be simpler. No bandings, no chartings; just one simple agreement. practiceplan provides pre-paid envelopes and undertakes all of the administration. You have monthly reports, fully detailing patient numbers, income, etc.

Contact practiceplan on 01691 684135 to arrange for a Regional Support Manager to visit your practice