| Comment | You're actually not far off the mark there. It's a bit complicated (as everything to do with renumeration is with dentistry), but essentially the government has temporarily suspended how our payments are made.
Normally, I do an NHS filling and get paid £x from the patient and £y from the NHS. At the moment, they're paying us a flat monthly rate of 80% of what I earned in the year before the pandemic. However, when I do a filling now the NHS is subtracting the £x payment the patient provides from the total monthly payment - the more work I do, the less the NHS pays me.
It's so weird - I still take the same amount home at the end of the month. I can either work flat out, half assed, or do nothing and it won't matter. It's also why we're not keen on treating new patients - my payment is based on the patient numbers I had registered in 2019. Everyone I've taken on since 2020, I'm effectively treating for free (sometimes at cost, if they need lab work that I need to pay for). |
|---|