On the train back from Leeds last week (standing most of the way because my previous train had been cancelled), we passed through Alfreton in Derbyshire.
A little-known fact about me, I think, is that after the practices I worked in for 11 years were sold to IDH in 2008, and I left immediately, I was given a pretty big IMOS contract from North Derbyshire and charged with taking all the ambulatory oral surgery out of Chesterfield Royal Hospital (They hated me) into a practice first in Chesterfield in a primary care centre and then relocating to a primary care centre in Alfreton.
Together with my former practice manager, Ange, we formed a partnership, invested £5000 each, and set up Refine Specialist Dental Care.
The website is here; you can look at it. Ange has a brilliant business here that is really successful and has been running for about ten years.
Ange and I set this up together, and we ran it with the contract that we had. Then, we were given an orthodontic contract. We added some implants, hygiene, and other treatments, and we took the business to well over a million-pound turnover in a short space of time.
For various reasons (re-contracting, difficulty working with the PCTs, and wanting to focus my attention elsewhere), Ange bought the practice from me in 2015 or 16 or something like that, ran with it, and made it very successful in her own right.
I was really proud of what we did there.
We provided an extraordinary oral surgery contract.
We were the first ever IMOS contract to voluntarily report our outcomes to the PCT every month, complications, complaints, and all that stuff.
We were the place that people turned to if they had difficult patients or patients who had been in trouble.
We looked after people enormously well, and our outcomes were absolutely brilliant.
We almost never prescribed an antibiotic to anybody.
We developed clinicians and team members and had a real hub in the primary care centre for the community.
We raised money for charity.
It was a great societal business.
When I left, though, it marked my end of working with the NHS. I was sad about that. I had 21 years of massive commitment to the NHS, but in 2015, I felt that my aspirations and my dreams would be met elsewhere doing other things.
I passed Alfreton on the train but what I thought was they were great times and we did amazing things, but there are other times ahead in different directions, not the time to look back, only the time to look sideways out the train for two minutes and smile and then carry on.
Not too high with a highs, not too low with the lows.
Blog Post Number - 3870
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