Welcome to Dentabyte

Coming from mixed practice, I was curious when Vinai and Seema told me they believed they had built a blended NHS contract that could address many of the frustrations dentists felt with UDAs. There was a steep learning curve ( and a fair amount of disbelief!) whilst we got our head around the concept of using risk assessments to stream patients into care pathways. However I was pleasantly surprised to find I could prescribe, delegate and oversee timeconsuming preventive care to DCPs, allowing me to concentrate on providing the treatment that I was trained to do at university. Ash Choksi GDP

This was a brave tender which challenged the inappropriateness of trying to fund all NHS care with UDAs.

The practice had to be fully compliant with HTM 01-05, patients in Bow had high needs and the management team needed to spend a fair proportion of time addressing Key Performance Indicators and balanced scorecards.

Seema, Vinai and their colleagues embarked on a flightpath of constructive innovation and tendered for 3 key funding streams:

A high UDA value to cover the added costs of infection control for HTM 01-5 compliance, and to remunerate the time it would take their dentists to add risk assessments and supervision of DCPs to their workload.
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A dedicated preventive fund pot for a fully staffed hygienist/therapist chair, and salaried extended duties dental nurse so that patients could be given protected professional time and advice- key for patient motivation.
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Protected provider funds, so that the addditional burden of management around Key Performance Indicators was appropriately funded.

Follow our Steele pilot flightpath.

Steele progress report April 2010

Steele progress report May 2010

Steele progress report June 2010

Steele progress report July 2010

Steele progress report August 2010

Steele progress report Sept 2010

Most dentists would agree that a well oiled fully comprehensive dental service has been impossible to provide on a UDA contract and the old associate/principal % arrangement no longer works. In this case after protracted negotiations, a promising blended contract with clear funding streams for items that could not be "squeezed into the UDA" has been agreed with Tower Hamlets PCT.