So, I was chatting to someone the other day who still works in the practice that I left 9 years ago. My boss at the time had built up two practices to become high grossing NHS practices with an Orthodontic service, an Oral surgery service and an Implant service, the latter two that were provided by me.
They sold out for a big number, continued to work in the practices but I am told (allegedly) that recently the former boss was asked to leave. The new practice manager came into the practice and continued to adopt the principle of targets for UDA’s and private income on white boards for each individual dentist.
I’ll get to that later in this blog.
The former principle took umbrage to this and decided to write targets for the new practice manager on the board as well, including fixing broken equipment. The practice manager took umbrage to this and the ‘Suits’ came down from Head office to sack the former principle. Little did they realise that the former principle worked at one of their other practices and he also left that.
This is the action of bullies with no idea of the reaction of their action on the wider business as a whole.
This is the action of people who play the white board month-by-month and quarter-by-quarter.
When did we get to this stage? The people with 30-40 years of experience as clinicians in dentistry have no authority about the care that is provided to patients because they ‘don’t fit into the white board’.
Make no mistake we let this happen, don’t feel sorry for the guy who sold his practice to the corporates for millions of pounds, he knew he was selling his soul to the devil.
The sad thing is that we allowed the profession to do this, to sell us away to the guys who count us by percentage of occupancy in a surgery or the numbers that we churn out. Celebrating the people with the high numbers regardless of how they got there.
More and more as I hear these stories I feel entirely isolated in my situation. I picture myself standing on a beach with my swim shorts on (love handles hanging out over the sides) trying to hold back a tsunami with a lilo.
It’s pointless. I will never win and can never stand up to this torrent.
But I tell you what it will make a great photograph for anyone watching.
Blog post number: 1409
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