Software for UK private dental practices
Thirty-four hundred-pound implant plan. She says “I’ll think about it”. By Saturday she’s on Instagram looking at Antalya.
You’re the principal at a private dental practice in a market town, or the practice manager at a four-chair group in north London running on Dentally or Software of Excellence. The treatment-plan economics - the £3,400 implants, the £4,000 full-mouth rehab, the £1,800 Invisalign - are the difference between a comfortable year and a flat one, and the gap between “here’s what I’d recommend” in the chair and the deposit landing in your account is where half the revenue dies. Saturday morning your treatment-plan patient is comparison-shopping in Antalya. The 6-month recall you sent in July hasn’t been replied to and October is nearly gone. Reception is still re-typing the PMH form from a clipboard. NHS UDA reporting eats Friday afternoon either way. Monday morning the hygienist had three no-shows by 11 and you noticed at 12.
This page is for dental practices specifically - the clinics hub covers the cross-clinic operational loop. What’s on this page is the dental-distinct economics: the high-ticket treatment-plan finance moment, the recall-as-annuity, the radiography compliance side, the Turkey-comparison-shopping defence, the NHS UDA-reporting Friday-afternoon job. If you’re a mixed-modality clinic with some aesthetic or some hygienist-led work, the hub is also worth reading.
What your week actually looks like
- Tuesday afternoon - £3,400 implant treatment plan presented in the chair; patient asks for a printout; leaves with a piece of paper that goes in the glovebox.
- Saturday - she’s on Instagram looking at a clinic in Antalya doing the same case for £900. By Thursday she’s deposited.
- 6-month recall went out in July to 240 patients. October now - ninety of them haven’t replied, haven’t booked, haven’t unsubscribed. They’ll come back in February as £1,200 emergency root canals.
- Hygienist’s diary Monday - three no-shows by 11am. Reminder fired, no reply. £270 gone before lunch and the waitlist sat unwoken.
- New patient at 9.30 - clipboard PMH, half illegible. Receptionist re-keys it into Dentally for fifteen minutes while the next patient queues.
- NHS UDA reporting Friday afternoon - your clinical activity tracking from R4 / SOE / Dentally against the band-1 / 2 / 3 split, the FP17 submissions, the clawback risk if you under-deliver.
- The intraoral radiograph machine - IRMER duty-holder roles (RPA, RPS, referrer, practitioner, operator) - currently in a Word doc somewhere. CQC inspection mentions it last every time.
- Tabeo / Chrysalis / V12 finance - every clinician says they offer it, the workflow is clunky, deposits get lost between the chair and the patient’s commute home.
- Google Business Profile sits at 3.9; the practice across the road’s at 4.8. Dentally fires the review request at invoice - patient hasn’t put her coat on yet.
Example problems we could solve
1. The treatment plan that doesn’t go to Antalya on Saturday - at depth
The chair-to-Antalya moment: £3,400 implant plan signed in the chair. Patient says I’ll think about it. By Saturday she’s on Instagram. By Thursday she’s deposited in Antalya. You never sent the Tabeo link because the clinician was running ten minutes late.
Solved looks like: at treatment-plan-signed-in-the-chair, the plan PDF lands on her phone with a practitioner-credentials sheet (GDC number, years qualified, complications-handled framing) and a finance-link option pre-rendered against your panel - Tabeo for instant 0% on £1k-£5k, Chrysalis for longer-term 24-60 month on bigger cases, V12 for the high-ticket implant + perio-rehab work. Tap on the train home, instant decision, the plan transitions to finance accepted, the booking link comes back in the same thread. If she doesn’t tap, the nudge ladder runs - +24h “the plan’s still here”, +72h with a short video from the principal explaining her case at her level, +7 day with the Antalya-rebuttal trust strip (cost-of-revision-work, same-surgeon-for-follow-ups, indemnity-and-recourse - all things a Turkey clinic can’t honestly offer). Drop-off tracking surfaces chair-to-deposit conversion by clinician so the practice manager can see which clinicians are losing plans and at which stage. The longer version lives at Stage Payment & Retention Ledger.
2. The 6-month recall that books, not the one she ignored
The October-ninety moment: sent the recall to 240 patients in July; October now, ninety haven’t replied; they’re not unsubscribed, not booked, just gone. They’ll come back as a £1,200 emergency in February.
Solved looks like: the 6-month recall isn’t a single message, it’s a relationship ladder - 5-mo, 6-mo, 7-mo, 9-mo, 12-mo - running against last-visit date with WhatsApp-first / SMS-fallback / email-last routing, one-tap booking back into Dentally / SOE / Cliniko. At 9 months the patient whose previous clinician’s left gets a practitioner-change-offer (“Dr X has joined us in November; would you like to switch your hygienist?”); at 12 months a re-engagement nudge with the recall-not-suppression-list framing. Practice-side dashboard shows recall-to-rebook by ladder stage so you can see which step in the cadence is doing the work. The longer version lives at Recurring Service Recall - the cross-clinic recall annuity that runs the 6-month dental cadence, the annual vet booster, and the wellness-plan DD lifecycle through the same engine.
3. NHS UDA reporting that doesn’t eat Friday
The Friday-at-7 moment: mixed practice - 60% NHS, 40% private. UDA reporting Friday afternoon - pulling band 1 / 2 / 3 splits from R4 / SOE / Dentally, the FP17s, the clawback risk if you under-deliver. Practice manager at her desk till 6 every Friday.
Solved looks like: the NHS performer’s clinical activity rolls into a UDA dashboard that updates against each clinician’s daily activity - band split per clinician, projected UDA delivery against contract, clawback exposure, the FP17 submission status, the patient charges collected against the NHS-fee schedule. The Friday-afternoon job becomes a Tuesday-morning review on a tablet - “clinician X is 47 UDAs behind schedule, projected miss; clinician Y is over-running on band 3” - with the FP17 submission queue surfaced rather than searched-for. The build doesn’t replace the PMS’s clinical record (R4 / SOE / Dentally own that); it sits over the activity layer with a practice-manager view. The longer version lives at Job Cost & Margin Dashboard.
4. The treatment-plan + invoice + payment loop the patient can read
The “have I paid?” moment: patient’s done the £4,000 full-arch case. Deposit was Tabeo, completion stage was a card payment in the chair, balance was on Stripe. She asks “have I paid?” three times. You say yes each time.
Solved looks like: the treatment plan as a structured object on her phone from acceptance - total fee £4,000; deposit £800 (paid via Tabeo financing); stage payment £1,600 (due at prep visit); completion £1,600 (due at fit). Each stage carries its payment state and a one-tap link to pay (card on file, Direct Debit where set up, the in-chair card-machine pre-loaded for the stage amount). On the practice side, the same record lives in Xero with the structured stage receivables, and Dentally / SOE / Cliniko gets the paid event written back as a treatment-stage state. The same-week chase ladder runs against any stage that’s gone over due - first nudge polite, second with the practitioner’s name, third escalating to the practice manager’s mobile-side intervention before it lands in collections. The longer version lives at Stage Payment & Retention Ledger.
Closest builds we’ve shipped
- mendbuddythe agent platform behind the WhatsApp-first recall ladder in problem 2 and the +24h / +72h / +7d nudge sequence in problem 1. Trained on your treatment-plan language, your clinician-voice, and the Antalya-rebuttal trust signals. See Mendbuddy.
- pharmaceutical-analytics.coma custom analytics dashboard we built for an analytics consultancy. The chair-to-deposit conversion view by clinician and the UDA-delivery dashboard share the same shape: operational data captured at every patient touchpoint, decision dashboard for the principal. See Pharmaceutical Analytics.
- mendmyiour founder’s service-business storefront with stage-payment flows end-to-end. The dental treatment-plan stage-payment loop is shape-wise the same: structured fee, multi-stage payment trail, customer-visible balance. See Mendmyi.
FAQ
Will the recall ladder work with Dentally / Software of Excellence / R4 / Cliniko?
Dentally and Cliniko expose API / webhooks for patient + treatment events; the ladder reads from there, writes the booking back. SOE / R4 - typically a daily export rather than real-time; the ladder still works on a 24-hour rhythm. We confirm against your specific install in discovery.
Will the treatment-finance link work for Tabeo, Chrysalis, and V12?
All three. Your existing broker relationship stays as-is; we wire the plan-to-link generator and the status-callback so the financing decision comes back into the PMS as a treatment-stage state rather than a separate spreadsheet.
Does the system handle the IRMER side (RPA / RPS / referrer / practitioner / operator roles)?
The compliance-evidence trail (duty-holder roster, training records, equipment QA log) assembles as you work - when CQC inspection lands, the IRMER folder is one URL. The duty-holder appointments and the radiation-protection advice itself stay with the named RPA - we don’t replace that.
Will you submit my FP17s on my behalf?
No. FP17 submission is a clinician-side accountability with NHSBSA; what the system does is pre-fill the FP17 from the clinical activity in R4 / SOE / Dentally and queue it for one-tap submission. You sign, you submit.
Do you handle CQC / GDC registration and revalidation on my behalf?
No. CQC registration, GDC scope-of-practice, indemnity, complaint-handling - all clinician-side or practice-owner-side accountabilities. The system makes the evidence trail assemble as you work; the registration and the conversations with the regulators stay yours.
What does it cost?
Every build is scoped per practice - depends on chairs, PMS, NHS / private mix, whether the treatment-finance concierge + recall ladder + UDA dashboard are all in scope. We talk it through, agree price in writing. See pricing.
Up to the hub
← UK private clinics (hub) · Aesthetic / cosmetic (sibling) → · Private GP (sibling) → · Vet (sibling) →
Tell us about your practice
What practice you run, how many chairs, what PMS, what’s the NHS-private mix, where the treatment-plan or recall pain sits. Send an enquiry - we’ll come back with a sketch of what we’d build. No calendar, no demo. Email reply, scoped sketch, you decide.