What you need to know
Dental services have been available throughout the NHS since its creation in 1948. However, most dentists are not employed by the NHS but operate as independent contractors, choosing where to locate their premises and how much, if any, NHS treatment to provide.
NHS dental services are provided in primary care and community settings, and in hospitals for more specialised care. NHS England directly commissions all dental services for the NHS and there are over a million patient contacts with NHS dental services each week.
The total market for UK dental care is projected to reach a value of £10 billion by the end of 2019. The market has been boosted by consistent demand for private dental services as successive increases to NHS dentistry patient charges have closed the gap between the two types of service provision, while cosmetic procedures not available on the NHS are more in-demand.
Covered in this Report
For the purposes of this report, our definition of the UK dentistry market includes the following sectors:
The NHS Primary General Dental Service - This includes revenue from patient fees and government payments to practices under dental contacts.
The Private Sector - This includes patient fees paid on a per-treatment basis to dentists and revenues from dental plans. The private sector is segmented into primary general dental services - the same treatments available under the NHS.
Private Cosmetic Dental Services - This includes additional treatments where there is no defined patient need.
Hospital, community and personal dental services are excluded from this report.
The terms ‘dental care professionals’ and ‘dental specialists’ are used to refer to those employees qualified to support dentists, such as dental technicians, nurses, therapists and hygienists.
Corporate dentistry groups are defined as incorporated companies operating three or more dental practices.
The companies profiled in this report include a range of operators in the corporate dental industry (companies operating three or more dental practices) and dental insurance industry. They are selected as being representative of a cross-sample of types of operator rather than necessarily the largest industry participants.
All values quoted in this report are at current prices unless otherwise specified.
The term billion is used to represent one thousand million.
Some totals in tables do not add exactly due to rounding methods.
