Back to the realities of work.

Just reached the end of a pretty busy week in work. Dentistry has been enjoyable, it has been great repairing, restoring and building new smiles for my patients. I've managed to fit some high quality laboratory work and I've been pleased with the results I've achieved.


My biggest gripe is the end of year chase for UDA's. Three years ago a new contract was introduced into NHS dentistry, we agreed to provide a certain number of UDAs each year for twelve equal payments from our NHS masters. Working with this contract for three years now I can see that it is pretty much unworkable, with all the advantages being given to the government, fortunately we tend to see only children under the NHS but the impact of the contract is still significant. Unfortunately due to various factors that have occurred over the year it appears that I will fall short on my performance target again. Its not that I have done anything different in terms of treatment planning, I possibly have missed more work-time this year due to the cancellations of my operation, I think in all this has equated to 3.5 weeks. Also the turn of the year was affected by adverse weather and we probably had a higher number of cancellations and failures due to the weather. My shortfall is equivalent to just under a month of work, I wonder when our annual review occurs whether our local PCT will make any allowances for these factors. To be honest probably not.


On a more positive note, I have several interesting cases  in the pipeline, I will try to document these both in words and pictures and if the patients are willing, to display the results here.


So roll on the weekend, hopefully the weather will improve.