A Practice Plan event helped three dental practice owners salvage their business and renew their love for dentistry through an NHS to private conversion.
When Richard Staincliffe and his business partners Andrew Lamb and Cerys Williams at Duston Dental found themselves losing the equivalent of three-and-a-half full-time employees within a three-week period in 2022, their whole future appeared to be in jeopardy.
Duston Dental is a well-established practice that opened originally in the late 1960s. Until Richard, Andrew and Cerys bought the practice in 2007, it had been under the control of a single owner offering solely NHS treatments. In 2011, the team opened a second site which gave them a total of 10 surgeries to deliver an NHS contract of around 45,000 UDAs.
Although things had been going well until the pandemic, thanks to their good reputation locally and low staff turnover, as the world began to reopen, life got much harder. Lockdown had given Richard time to reflect on his work-life balance.
‘We’d managed to retain good staff and when we had associates leave, we managed to recruit,’ he says. ‘But at the same time, I was getting to the point where I was quite tired of running an NHS practice and dealing with all of the rigmarole. So much so that during COVID I had some reflection time and I got to the point where I sat down with Andy and Cerys and said, “I want to sell up. I don’t enjoy running the practice, I just want to get rid of it”.’
Plans in tatters
For a while the plan was to sell the practice. However, losing so many associates in such a short space of time presented a problem. Despite advertising extensively, they were unable to recruit replacements.
‘I think we got one CV for any of the posts, and they didn’t want the job in the end,’ Richard explains. ‘We just could not recruit for NHS work. So, we were now facing the same problems that every other practice up and down the country had come to.’
Without sssociates to deliver the contract, not only would they face punitive clawback, but also the prospect of being unable to sell the practice. However, everything changed when Andrew attended Practice Plan’s 2022 Club Weekend in Portugal as the guest of a local colleague, Vivak Shah.
‘I think he was just taking me to cheer me up,’ Andrew says. ‘But I went, and I met the Practice Plan team and Michelle (Hardy) and Jo (Phillpot) from our region. And I realised these dentists like me. They’re not different to me, but they don’t work for the NHS. And the feedback was good. They told me what good support they’d had from Practice Plan. So, when I came back, I spoke to Rich and Cerys, and said, “You know what? Maybe we should look at doing this. Perhaps there is an alternative to selling up or going bankrupt in 12 months’ time.”‘
In summer 2022 the team contacted Practice Plan to talk through their options. ‘In the end Michelle and Jo, basically took us under their wing and said, “Richard, Andy, Cerys, it’s going to be all right,”‘ Richard recalls. ‘And I thought, “Okay, I trust you, because it’s got to be okay.”‘ And so, work began on the conversion.
Full conversion, no choice
Although the team went through a full conversion from NHS to private, that had not been their original intention. They had hoped to rebase their contract and retain some UDAs. However, things did not work out that way, as Andrew explains.
‘I did all the negotiations with the area team. I wanted to keep one third of our contract value so that we could still continue to offer some degree of NHS, but without it affecting the viability of our practice. But they said to me, “It’ll be all or nothing. You’re either going to keep the whole thing or it’s very unlikely that you’ll get such a big reduction.” And the reason that they cited for that was because it will create too large an inequality in health service provision of dentistry, which was astounding to me.’
Despite some sleepless nights and some negative feedback from a small percentage of patients, the team is now enjoying spending more time with their patients. Around 6,000 signed up to the plan meaning they have more than enough to keep the business growing and developing.
Post conversion life
Post conversion life, according to Andrew, is: ‘A lot better. Really good. In fact, I wish we’d been brave enough to have done it earlier. Lots of patients stayed with us so, financially, the practice is better off and in terms of the team, my dentists are happier. They like having a bit more time with their patients. The nurses have more time to do their decon because we haven’t got so many patients all the time. It’s been a nicer working balance.
‘And of course there’s nowhere near as much red tape,’ he adds. ‘You forget how much there is in the NHS. How many rules about, you can’t do this without doing that. And it’s lovely being able to make decisions based on what you think is the right thing for a patient and not just because it follows some made-up rule.’
Thriving, not just surviving
However, it’s not only the business that’s thriving. Richard has gone from someone who admitted to being disillusioned with dentistry and wanting to leave the profession to now being inspired to see out the rest of his career happily as a general dentist.
‘I had started to get my ducks in line for an exit,’ he admits. ‘I’ve been studying for a master’s in law, which I’m about to finish. But I was going to move to maybe medico-legal work; probably go into education, sell out the practice and go off, do something else completely different.
‘Now I can see the future. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. And I’ve told this to people, I’m going to be here for another 15 years which will take me through to pretty much retirement. But now that’s what I want to do because I enjoy coming to work,’ he enthuses. ‘I enjoy looking after people now.’
‘You’re going to be fine’
Richard credits their successful transition in part to the support they received from the Practice Plan team.
‘I would say that talking to Practice Plan is probably the most helpful thing that I’ve done,’ he says. ‘They’ve done conversions many times before. And that reassuring arm round the shoulder to say, ‘Do you know what? It’s going to be all right, Rich. You’re not going to be facing the bankruptcy courts. You’re going to be fine. You’ve been here for that long, and I’ve got other data to back this up’, was what we needed to hear.
‘Having Michelle and Jo in practice with us, really helped to settle down a lot of those nerves, because I think if we’d have tried this on our own, it would not have gone as well. So, working with Practice Plan, it has been the catalyst for our future success.’
If you’re considering your options away from the NHS and are looking for a plan provider who will hold your hand through the process at a pace that’s right for you, why not start the conversation with Practice Plan on 01691 684165 or book your one-to-one NHS to private call today practiceplan.co.uk/nhsvirtual.
For more information visit practiceplan.co.uk/nhs.
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