Dental Working Patterns Survey 2018/19 and 2019/20 guidance notes for England and Wales

If your invitation to participate in the survey came by letter and the postal address is out of date, please do not worry. The address has been provided by the NHS Business Services Authority dental services based on your NHS dental activity in 2019/2020 (or 2018/2019).

Primary care dentistry is primary care dental treatment provided outside of hospitals, and includes dentistry performed in dental practices, dental access centres, salaried/community dental services as well as emergency dental services. Primary care dentistry consists of NHS and private work and can occur in more than one practice.

Please note that primary care dentistry includes time spent on relevant non-clinical work (which can include administrative and management duties) and can also involve orthodontic work, domiciliary care or dentistry performed on referral.

It does not include secondary care, time spent working for a post-graduate deanery or in dental school.

Please include the number of months you worked as a primary care dentist (as defined above); during these months you may have taken holidays or performed secondary dental care as well. Please note that any extended period of continuous absence of one month or more (e.g. maternity/sickness leave) should be excluded.

If you were working in a primary care dental practice for 12 months, and also working in a hospital part time for part of the year, you would mark down 12 months in the box provided.

If you worked only 2 days per week as a primary care dentist, but did so for the entire year, you would mark down 12 months in the box provided.

For the purpose of answering this survey, clinical work is defined as all face-to-face contact with patients (including preventative care).

Please only include annual leave as time away from dentistry; this does not include time away from dentistry due to extenuating circumstances (such as sickness, maternity leave, compassionate reasons etc.), nor does it include time away for continuing professional development (CPD).

Please see Annex A for detailed descriptions of each dental type (NHS working arrangement).

Example A

The dentist is an owner of one dental practice, has a contract with NHS England/Local Health Board (LHB) and performs general dental services within the practice. This dentist would answer question 6/14 as below:

Example B

The dentist is an owner of one dental practice, has a contract with NHS England/LHB and performs general dental services within the practice. The dentist also performs general dental services in the practice of another dentist (as an associate). This dentist would answer Question 6/14 as shown below. Please note, if the dentist switched arrangements in the year, becoming a Providing-Performer after being an Associate (or vice versa), they would answer in the same way.

Example C 

The dentist performs general dental services for their own limited company or limited liability partnership. In EITHER case, the company/partnership is not under contract with NHS England/LHB but performs dentistry for another provider, practice owner or company/partnership. This dentist would answer question 6/14 as below:

Providing-Performer dentists who hold a contract or contracts with NHS England/Local Health Boards (LHB) can choose to run their businesses under a number of different arrangements. These dentists might hold the contract themselves or might be an owner/director/partner of a company that holds the contract.

For each contract that you hold (or that a company of which you are an owner/director/partner holds), please indicate the business arrangement in the table provided.

Associate – Incorporated dentists perform dentistry for their own body corporate which is responsible for performing dentistry for another provider, practice owner or limited company. Please indicate the business arrangement (limited company or limited liability partnership) in the table provided.

Please see annex A for detailed descriptions of each business arrangement.

Appendix A

The dentist does not personally hold a contract with NHS England/LHB but is an owner/director/partner of a limited company, which holds two contracts, with NHS England/LHB(s). This dentist would answer question 7/15 as below:

Appendix B 

The dentist holds a total of three contracts with NHS England/LHB(s). For two of these contracts, the dentist is involved in limited liability partnerships; for the other contract the dentist is the sole performer of dental services. This dentist would answer question 7/15 as shown below. Please note, if the dentist switched business arrangements within the year, they would answer in the same way.

Example C

The dentist is the owner/director/partner of a limited company that holds a contract with NHS England/LHB to provide dental services, but this dentist does not perform any dental services under this particular contract. This dentist also holds another contract with NHS England/LHB and performs some of the dental services under this second contract, has no partners, but also sub-contracts two other dentists to perform dentistry under this particular contract with him/her. This dentist would answer question 7/15 as below: