Dentistry remains most optimistic primary care profession for eighth year running

The Lloyds Bank Commercial Banking Healthcare Confidence Index – an annual survey of GPs, dentists and pharmacists on the outlook for their industries – measures overall business confidence using a blended figure of short-term and long-term projections.

While dentists’ confidence has dipped slightly this year, the decline is only by a single point to -3. This means that dentistry remains the most optimistic primary healthcare profession and continues to outperform the primary care sector as a whole, which gave a reading of -16.

Respondents were asked to rate their confidence in both short and long-term business prospects, with short-term confidence unchanged from the previous year at +40. However, long-term confidence dipped slightly, from -44 to -46, meaning that dentists’ overall confidence score fell by one point compared with last year’s score of -2.

Looking to the rest of the sector, pharmacists’ overall confidence registered at -17, while GPs were the least optimistic of all primary care professionals with a confidence reading of -28.