Dedicated to carrying out the highest level of service in all its practices, Real Good Dental’s executive chairman, Peter Keegans, offers new insight into the corporate’s unique mission and values, to the benefit of the team, patients and the business.
Real Good Dental (RGD) is a Scottish-based dental business, with more than 60 sites across the country. The company was founded 2012. In that time, we have deliberately been operating under the radar, to allow our practices to shine and grow organically.
Our original founders were initially attracted to the Scottish NHS model rather that the UDA system in England and Wales. So they decided to go into the venture together in Scotland and the rest is history.
Ten years in, we have experienced incredible growth and are looking to maintain our expansion trajectory over the coming months. It is time for us to be loud and proud about what we do and also what we can do going forwards!
What we stand for
Today, we are incredibly proud that the business is still led by our founder dentist, who believes passionately in local dentistry for local people. Our soft touch approach to new practices that join our group sets us apart from the majority of the corporate models within the UK. All our practices maintain their own brand and, most importantly, also their own way of working.
However, that doesn’t mean we are entirely hands off. We are there to support our practices in achieving their goals, whether that be for the dental team, their patients or their business.
It is perhaps best encapsulated by our mission statement, which is as follows:
‘The Real Good way is to empower and support practices to be the best version of themselves, enabling nothing short of clinical excellence for the best patient experience and treatment outcome. As the corporate that cares, we promise only positive change, delivered with a light touch, always personalised to suit you, your team and your patients.’
Clinical freedom and a light touch
We’ve always been committed to giving our practices clinical freedom combined with a light touch management style from RGD.
We’ll always retain the clinic’s local brand and complement with RGD corporate resources as requested by our local practice colleagues. We aim to provide a clinical training course for staff in every quarter. We remain at the forefront of new technologies in the dental market.
Another aspect of our commitment is to offer all dental treatments to our patients within their local communities. We have a large number of specialists within our group. We’ve created an internal portal for referring to the right dentist for the right course of treatment.
We take our values-driven ethos very seriously. To that end we make 10 promises to our practices:
- Your practice ethos remains at the heart of everything
- No corporate ego
- Positive change only
- Full working freedom
- Quick decision making
- Integrity
- Support to achieve and maintain clinical excellence for patients
- Digital expertise to drive growth
- People first, benefits for the whole team
- The network of expertise to support you at every turn.
Sometimes we are asked what differentiates us from other corporates. While we have a wealth of benefits, I believe it can be described in four words: honour, integrity, youth and vigour.
The best now and in the future
In 2022, we are proud to have grown to over 60 dental practices. We are developing our head office functions to support our practices even further. We have recruited a great team. At the same time, we have secured new funding to support our future growth plans. To date, it has been exhilarating.
With our renewed vigour it almost feels like we are just getting started. We are ready to face new challenges.
With that in mind, we have some very exciting plans, in essence to continue to provide great patient care in all our practices, and develop our clinical and practice teams through excellent continuous development programmes (ie, enhanced CPD opportunities).
Moreover, we are very much looking forward to adding further outstanding practices to our existing business and create a ‘best in class’ team based in our new head office in central Edinburgh.
At Real Good Dental, we are always looking for welcoming, caring and experienced dental professionals to join our rapidly growing team.
If we have piqued your interest, for further information simply visit www.realgooddental.com, email [email protected] or call 0131 374 7825.
