This week's crisis seems to be the announcement that Rachel Reeves has decided to ask the Competition and Markets Authority to probe dentistry, following a sharp increase in prices. This only became apparent yesterday, and already (and remember that I am not on social media, particularly and don't really see any of the madness) this is everywhere in dentistry, and many people seem set to jump off the window ledge anytime soon.
Maybe it's because I'm old, and maybe it's because I've seen this happen time and time again, but we're always in some sort of crisis related to regulation or finances or sterilisation, or any other number of things which are crucifying the profession, making it impossible for us to work and damaging our livelihoods.
There is a standard approach to the crisis like this which very few people are able to take because generally their nose is too close to the grindstone to be able to see and I learned about this approach during COVID ( another of the crises which was set to derail everybody and ruin the whole world), because I was the one whose nose was closer to the grindstone than anyone else.
In the middle of the COVID pandemic, it was impossible for me to see any opportunity or any possibility because all I was trying to do was to stay alive when I was almost dead.
While everybody else was ‘working’, by sitting in their back garden drinking beer and posting pictures on Facebook. I was working 12 and 16 hours a day in the hope that the practice would reopen again, and I could see some patients to try and pay the bills that I had.
I'm not in that situation now; it's different, and what I saw for the people who didn't have to think like that during COVID was that they sat back and waited for the opportunities to come, which inevitably arise from a crisis.
The best analogy I can remember is that of McDonald's, which had plenty of money in the bank, and they closed for a month. Took the furlough, paid all the staff, and set about redesigning what McDonald's would look like after the pandemic, when things reopened, and so, they went on delivery and all of those different avenues that we're able to allow McDonald's to blow out of the pandemic into an extraordinary place (I don't like McDonald's).
And so the same is here: clearly there has been a sharp rise in dentistry Prices, have gone up. What the government seem unable to notice is that this is absolutely directed at market forces. There are not enough dentists because dental schools have closed, because of Brexit, and many of our foreign colleagues left and went home, because we don't have enough dentists to provide dentistry.
The profession has never expanded the role of the therapist or the dental nurse, even to 10% of what they should, and we have never looked closely at how to make the most of our workforce or how to make the best of our NHS budget. No one wants to work in NHS dentistry because the system itself is utterly fractured, and therefore everyone is clamouring to get out, and when they get out, there are enough patients for almost everybody in private dentistry, and therefore there is scarcity, and therefore the price goes up.
I wonder if the government are going to provide an investigation into hotel rooms, because the last time I looked, the Premier Inn prices were less than those of Four Seasons or the Dorchester, and therefore the Dorchester is profiteering from the fact that rich people want to access care in better environments of higher quality.
It's interesting, isn't it?
It always goes back to the discussion that says it costs so much to train dentists, so they have to work in the NHS for 5 years, but when you push that back to people and say, "Why don't we get the lawyers to work in legal aid for 5 years?", the politicians don't seem to like it.
This crisis will be over in a minute, and in any event, whatever is to come from it is not liable to affect you tomorrow. My suggestion is that we all get on with our work and continue to look forward to seeing what opportunities there are to provide extraordinary care and healthcare, and dental care to the people we seek to serve.
Blog Post Number - 4352