In May last year the chairman of the General Dental Council, Bill Moyes, said something which made the basis of a feature in The Times. He suggested that dentists ought to be more like supermarkets, where there is an equivalent of a “Lidl and a Waitrose and everything in between”. One chain of dentists is taking this idea literally, by being available in-store in Sainsbury’s. Is this the start of a culture change for dentists in the UK?
A tested model
To illustrate a point let’s look at the opticians. Not that long ago you would be hard pressed to name a brand of optician. They could be strangely oppressive places, nestled into a nook in a high street. Not everyone went for an eye check, even when instructed to go, as it took some effort and they were manned with quietly superior and eminent professionals you would never dream of questioning (a bit like the dentist then?).
Today, most people could name a brand of opticians quite easily – there’s Specsavers, Vision Express, Donald & Aitchison, Tesco Opticians and Boots Opticians for instance. The mark of a real step-change toward the customer is that now many people select glasses or pick them up whilst doing the weekly shopping in a supermarket. It is something done whilst people are out and about anyway and not as a specially organised trip. As they are physically in shops now, one could easily forget that opticians are a branch of healthcare. In this respect there has been a real change in the perception of going to this kind of healthcare practitioner. It is a change that is possible within dentistry.
“Dentistry is teetering on the edge of a revolution. We will in five years be looking at a fundamentally changed landscape in dentistry but the impact of change is already happening,” states Lisa Riley, CEO of Centre for Dentistry. “I started my career not in medicine but in the world of FMCG and we are in an age where consumer expectations, requirements and awareness are everything in any customer facing industry, including dentistry.”
Lisa Riley is at the helm of a project to see a phased roll-out of modern looking, full service dental centres across Britain in selected Sainsbury’s stores. It’s a contract with the supermarket that gives the brand first refusal as a dental practice in a number of superstores, and marks the beginning of a new approach to dental care. The aim over the course of the next two years is to add a significant number of centres across the superstore estate. When Bill Moyes postulated that the change in dentistry should be in having better customer relations and be customer focused, you wonder if this is the kind of thing he was envisioning.
“We are focusing on the consumer relationship and making life easier and a better experience for people” continues Lisa. There are of course numerous advantages to a dental practice located in a supermarket, “Parking is free and easy, opening hours are convenient, the environment is not intimidating.”
Market forces
Making dentists accessible, less feared and also affordable in a place patients are already used to going to once a week, might be an answer to the problem of dental attendance. Looking ahead, if it works, you wonder what other sectors of healthcare can follow this model and re-engage with a nation that has become fearful and disillusioned about white coats and waiting rooms.
Sometimes it takes a crisis to drive innovation in an industry. For dentistry and healthcare in general, that innovation may be as simple as choosing to perceive someone as a customer with choices, who you need to engage with and impress, rather than just another patient on the books who you need to treat.