And so, this week we’ve seen dentistry in headline news about three year waiting times on the BBC.
That will certainly focus the mind of politicians and people in healthcare bureaucracy because it looks bad to the people that potentially (but decreasingly) cast votes for them in general elections.
Probably worth stripping back the effect of this though and seeing the direction we might be heading in; in the next three-five years.
In designing the future of The Campbell Clinic group we took a long time to do a PEST analysis (Political, environmental, social and technological).
Let’s look at the political.
It looks increasingly unlikely that we’ll have any other colour of government than blue for the foreseeable future.
If we have a general election two years from now, it’s likely to be blue which means is likely to be six years of blue before we see any difference in political philosophical theory.
Even then it’s kind of hard to believe that the person who comes in is likely to be much further left than we already find ourselves.
If you extrapolate that back into possible investment in NHS dentistry from a political philosophy that suggests that investment in the public services should be reduced as a standard starting point, then it would seem that rationing within the NHS is likely to become standard for the next six years.
If you factor into this the environmental circumstances that we find ourselves in (hopefully) heading out the other side of a global pandemic with catastrophic financial outcomes, it makes the likely investment in NHS dentistry less again.
Socially, there’s not a massive impact across here and although we could look at technology to try to make it more efficient to provide NHS dentistry, see above for the likelihood of major investment in technology in NHS dentistry from the NHS!
So, it would appear (at least to me and I may be the only one) that the future of large investment in the NHS, as we were negotiating with our own NHS specialist contract in 2007/2008 is likely to be extremely limited.
If we accept that we will head towards a rationing situation in NHS dentistry, where do you think the money will go?
Do you think it’s likely that they will load up the money to the middle classes to make sure that children’s orthodontics has as much money as possible.
While that is feasible to try to claim votes, it seems inconceivable when there is such a limited pot of money available.
Do you think it’s likely that the middle classes will have significant investment in their NHS dentistry contracts in their leafy suburbs?
Again, potentially a vote winner in the middle class but really abhorrent if you’re on a restricted budget for NHS dentistry.
It seems that the only option would be the much vaunted 'core service’ that’s been talked about since I was a chairman of a local dental committee over 20 years ago.
It seems that we will have to focus our attention really carefully on the most needy in society and get the maximum bang for the buck in that area.
At least that seems like common sense to me, even if it doesn’t seem like common sense to anyone else.
With that in mind, you can try to chat with direction of travel in your own business environment.
Are you likely to see more or less private fee paying patients?
If you think the answer is yes, how will you harness that with the story and structure of your own business, in order to make sure that you stay afloat and thrive?
Not for no reason will the private healthcare companies who provide general private healthcare and private surgery be rubbing their hands together at the prospect of extended NHS waiting lists and decreased funding to the NHS to help pay for a pandemic.
Our blue government will still invest in the army and the police and local infrastructure (they don’t like central control), they want to invest in the NHS but there’s only a finite amount of money.
Perhaps it’s time to PEST analysis your own business and wonder where we’ll be five years from now because it’s hard to believe that NHS dental funding will be better.
Blog Post Number - 2749
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