TradeBridge shares the story of Angle House Orthodontics and how it is using traditional values to build an entrepreneurial, modern community dentist group.
Angle House Orthodontics has grown from a single north London practice to a 14-strong group, but it has achieved this success by putting the community first and striving to do the right thing in dentistry, rather than becoming a corporate empire. We sat down with the group’s inspirational founder Dr Hemant Patel and community manager Anis Idress to learn how traditional values and a caring culture can build growth in an increasingly corporate sector.
Angle House Orthodontics started out with one practice in 1988. It has now grown to a group of 14 spanning the Northern half of London, from Ealing in the west to Chingford in the East. From day one, the group was founded to be a force for good that diligently serves the healthcare needs of its local communities while helping to improve the outcomes of children and young people.
After contributing more than £300,000 to local children’s charities and helping to change the lives of over 5,500 young people, this caring and responsible culture has become a key part of the group’s DNA.
Entrepreneurial doesn’t have to mean corporate
Unlike the corporate business model, each practice in the Angle House group is individually owned with its own unique structure, which usually means a partnership between Hemant and one of his seven partners in the business. Each practice is run by a partner who lives and works in the community they serve.
‘The most important principle of our business model is that each practice is run by a stakeholder,’ Hemant says. ‘Around 20% of dental practices are now owned by corporates, and we don’t believe that model is right for our industry.’
The Angle House way is for dentists to own their own practices, which was the traditional model before the sector became corporatised.
‘You get stable healthcare services when they’re delivered by people who want to live and work in their community,’ he explains. ‘Dentists should be looking for a long-term professional career, not to flip practices and create empires. We have ended up with an increasingly corporatised sector that doesn’t deliver what communities need.’
A traditional approach
As an entrepreneurial business owner looking to build long-term growth, Hemant believes his traditional stakeholder approach has been a key factor in Angle House’s steady expansion. New partners are all selected from existing associates. When an entrepreneurial orthodontist shows interest in the business side, they are invited to become a partner by opening a new practice alongside an existing partner.
‘The right location is always important,’ Hemant says. ‘But the real growth factor is the dedication and commitment of the stakeholder we choose.’
What really sets Angle Orthodontics apart is the community-focused ethos that he has instilled in the business from day one. ‘They say it takes a village to raise a child,’ he explains. ‘That’s what we believe in. We want to be a lasting presence in the community where we live and work, so we can make a contribution beyond dentistry.’
Giving back to the younger generation
Angle House’s community activities are all about lending a helping hand to the next generation, whether that’s supporting the aspirations of children and young people or helping young dentists to advance in their careers.
The business created grant-making charity the Angle House Foundation in 2012 to support local charities that improve the lives of children. So far it has made grants of over £300,000, with funds contributed by each practice.
The foundation directly transforms young lives too, by running life-changing events and programs that connect young people from all backgrounds to opportunities they might not otherwise be able to access.
As Angle House’s dedicated community manager Anis Idress explains, the group is committed to build relationships with young people and help them to take control of their lives and their futures.
‘A lot of young people, especially those from state schools or deprived backgrounds, don’t trust what they get from school,’ he says. ‘We’ve stepped in to give them guidance, support and education that opens their minds to the training and opportunities available to them.’
Orthodontists have a unique opportunity to help young people
The group’s patients are mostly 12 to 18, at an age when they’re under pressure to think about their futures and career choices. With its particular point of access, Angle House has a real opportunity to engage with young people, and the business has helped around 5,500 children so far.
‘While we’re giving them confidence by improving their smile, we can improve their prospects at the same time,’ Anis says. ‘Many children come to us with limited horizons and imposter syndrome, but we can help them get into a Russell Group university or Oxbridge.’
This lifechanging work creates a lot of success stories. ‘One of the state school children we helped became the young mayor of a town and now works at the Bank of England,’ Anis reveals, while a patient Hemant treated when they were a child is now a partner in the business.
The team is always thinking of new ways to engage with young people. One of the initiatives Anis runs is Think It Possible, a careers discovery day with a difference. Instead of the usual format where children might feel too intimidated to ask questions of grown-up professionals, the Angle House team invited professionals to sit down with them over a meal instead, to have a friendly conversation and break down barriers.
Through its Angle House Smiles project, the group is also dedicated to improving the oral health of the local community, especially young children under 11 years old, by offering free education sessions to local schools. All the group’s staff are contracted to deliver two days of community service per year, for which they are paid, and many do additional voluntary work too.
Unwavering NHS commitment, but balance is key
NHS services have been a cornerstone of Angle House’s business since it began, and it currently delivers nine NHS contracts. The group is just as committed to NHS work as private work, but Hemant is clear that there is very little growth or profit to be found in the NHS, with the value of a unit of dental activity (UDA) now lower than in 2018 and costs constantly driven down. Considering these pressures, how can the business be so successful and still maintain its NHS commitment?
‘We upsell our private services in order to be profitable, while retaining our commitment to NHS work,’ Hemant explains. ‘We square the circle by finding the right balance. All our associates have an NHS commitment but with a manageable workload, so they can spend up to 60% of their time building a private client base.’
While some practices make NHS contracts profitable by employing cheaper dental therapists to see NHS patients, under the supervision of a qualified dentist or orthodontist, Angle House prefers all its patients to be seen by qualified orthodontists to maintain a high quality of care. ‘Our strategy is to develop private on its own but without excluding patients from NHS services,’ he says. ‘It’s a delicate balance.’
The group won its nine NHS contracts through competitive tender in 2018. While he is grateful to have the NHS business, Hemant fundamentally disagrees with the competitive commissioning model.
‘Competitive bidding for NHS contracts is wrong,’ he explains. ‘It actually creates monopolies, which I don’t think is right for our walk of life.’ Angle House mitigates against that monopoly by having a diversity of associates. ‘We have 50 orthodontists working for us,” he says, “and all of them are as committed to their NHS work as private work.’
Giving back to the dental community
Hemant believes that we all have a responsibility to help the younger generation. ‘Whatever your profession, you should lower the ladder down rather than take it up with you,’ he says. ‘I got where I am today because someone helped me to get a foot on the ladder.’
That principle is embodied in the way Angle House supports the wider dental community by offering free education and training. When the business recruits new people, it makes a transparent commitment to invest in their development, but its dedicated training arm Angle House Education goes above and beyond. Founded in 2014, it has now provided over 100 free lectures to the dental community across north London, from bespoke lectures and masterclasses to large Core CPD symposiums.
One of the reasons Angle House has made this commitment to education is to help young dentists get established, which is much more challenging than it used to be. ‘When I asked my bank for a loan to start my first practice in 1988,’ Hemant says. ‘They gave me more than I asked for, and I started to get NHS referrals straight away. That’s how easy it was.’
In today’s world of NHS commissioning, a new dental practice can only access NHS work if it wins a contract, which makes it highly challenging to get a foothold.
‘If you take out competition the way the NHS commissioning model does, you block young dentists from getting started,’ he explains. ‘They have to buy contracts valued at twice their practice’s annual turnover, but banks won’t lend the money because the contract may only have a few years left to run, which they see as too risky.’
Advice for practices who want to give back
With some Angle House community projects now running successfully for over twenty years, the group would be only too happy to pass on their experience to any dental or orthodontic practices who want to give back to the community.
‘There are no secrets to doing successful community work,’ Hemant says, ‘you just have to want to make the world a better place.’
At the end of the day, perhaps it all comes down to doing the right thing. ‘If you create an environment where you’re only looking at the profit margin, then you’ll do what is expedient rather what is right,’ he concludes.
‘There may be some people out to make money, but the vast majority of people in dentistry are there to care.’
TradeBridge is a natural partner for growth
TradeBridge is a specialist funder well positioned to help fund growth in the dental sector. Right now, we’re helping first-time buyers, growing practices and large groups to leverage their income from NHS and private trade to start new practices, expand their businesses and fund acquisitions.
Where traditional lenders may be reluctant to take a risk, dental businesses are instead looking carefully at specialists with an established pedigree in supporting entrepreneurial business owners to seize their moment.
With years of experience in the dental sector, we’ve designed a finance facility specifically for dental practices that uses real-time trading data and other information to make a faster, more accurate risk assessment that reflects the true strength of your business. That means we can offer a flexible, revolving line of credit of up to three times your practice’s monthly income, with no restrictions on its use, no fixed repayments, immediate online access and the freedom to only draw down (and pay for) what you need.
To find out more about TradeBridge, contact Clare on 07496 423 377 or email [email protected].
This article is sponsored by TradeBridge.
