Am I being overcharged for dentistry?

paulwellerfan

i am in the midlands and recently i have had a filling replaced ( it was a big filling ) Much like yours and it cost me 175.00

btw the dentist was working on it for over 30 min

Esoog

My NHS dentist gave me a check up, some advice - brush twice a day; electric is better than manual - then charged me £17 for the pleasure! :mad:

AdmiralX

Philthy wrote: »

I prefer to go private when it comes to my teeth;

I have no choice but this. You need to budget some money for dental treatment annually. The dentists have plans that you can join and cost economical.

Toothsmith

Esoog wrote: »

My NHS dentist gave me a check up, some advice - brush twice a day; electric is better than manual - then charged me £17 for the pleasure! :mad:

If you ignore that advice, then it's worthless, and you've wasted your money.

If you feel you do that already, then the reason it was given was because it doesn't look like you do that, and so the message to take is 'do it better'.

If you actually listen to what you were told, then it's probably the best bit of advice you've ever been given and a bargin at £17.

I charge about £50. Now - I spend a little bit more time, and I would point out exactly where I thought patients were going wrong, and I would cosset and encourage them a bit more. But essentially, for the vast majority of people, it would boil down to telling them to spend some time on their toothbrushing a couple of times a day and that an electric brush would probably do a better job than a manual one!

But as they keep coming back (when there are other private and an NHS place with spaces in the area), my patients obviously feel that I give some value!

Sue_1979

Hi, my hygienist charges £47.50 for about 20 minutes in the chair. As for fillings, the last one cost me £135 for what I thought was simple job. But I suppose you get what you pay for!

trumpton

Part of the problem is the price difference between NHS and private is huge. I had several visits to my dentist, a couple of courses of antibiotics, all to try to save a tooth with an infection under it. In the end it was removed - total cost a couple of years ago was around £42.

NHS dentistry is fantastic value and private dentistry is (often) overpriced in my opinion.

Not sure of up to date 2010 figures, but according to the Guardian, 1 in 30 dentists earned over £250k a year in 2008. Average earnings of those in completely private practice (ie no NHS) was £99k.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/aug/04/dentists-earnings-income

One in five dentists earns over £100k according to this report. It also says average pay for an NHS dentist in 2008/9 was £131k:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23868395-nhs-dentists-earning-over-pound-300000-a-year.do

Those dentists with a contract with a health trust have fared best under the new contracts scheme.

brook2jack

Actually many of those newspaper reports are quoting the gross earnings of dentists eg the amount made before expenses.

Dentists with a contract with a health trust "fare best" because their contract will be for a whole practice in other words will be the earnings for more than one dentist .

Newspapers have huge difficulties understanding the differences between what a dentist makes gross is before expenses and net after expenses (typically around 2/3 rds of gross) are paid.

To put this into context for a dentist to earn say £110,000 a year on the nhs they would have to complete a course of treatment (fillings , crowns,dentures etc ) on over 66 people each and every day 5 days a week 52 days of the year with no holidays,time off even on Christmas day. To earn £250,000 purely on the NHS that dentist personally would on their own have to do a complete course of treatment on over 150 people each and every day. A bit of a nonsense but one newspapers keep trotting out because they cant be bothered to check facts.

If you read the report the guardian quoted you will see that the 70% of dentists who don't own a practice earned an average of £65,000 a year and those who invested in buying a practice with the financial risks that involved and run a small business earn on average £120,000. This covers both nhs and private income. This was in 2008 and earnings have dropped 5.2% 2008 to 2010 and approximately 3% in 2010. This is not quite as newsworthy as the headlines suggest.


As to private dentists , they earn about 5% more than nhs dentists. Private dentistry is seen as expensive because the overheads are much more than in a nhs practice.