Fair Pricing Policy

Here at The Rock Dental Practice, fair pricing is an important part of our ethos. We want the

fees that we charge you as a patient to be great value to you but to also reflect a fair price

for our skills and experience - without compromising the quality of materials, our duty to the

environment, or the respect we have for our staff and suppliers.

Below we have set out what we will do to try to make this happen. Making you aware of the

fees. We want you to be fully aware of the treatment we are proposing, the reason why we

are proposing it and of the fees that you will pay before treatment starts.

We also want you to be aware of when your fees will be due, in most cases this will be at the

end of each appointment.

To do this we will:

• Display a fee guide on the web site, and make sure it is available on reception.

• Discuss with you the treatment we think is necessary and the reasons why and provide

information leaflets for further information about your treatment.

• Provide a treatment plan which includes estimated costs for each patient before treatment

starts.

• Provide a new treatment plan with updated fees if the treatment needs to change for any

reason. How can I save money on my dental treatment?

• Sign up to one of our dental plans! We think they offer great value for patients as the base

cost is slightly lower than you would pay normally for your routine appointments, but you also

benefit from a member’s price for certain treatment costs, and access emergency

appointments free of charge. You can read more about the plans on our web site, (terms

and conditions apply).

• All our treatment is aimed at getting you dentally fit and making your mouth as self-

cleansing as possible, to help to significantly reduce your treatment needs going forward and

in the future.

Fee Rises

We review our fees every year and based on our current costs and the current market

conditions we will decide whether to increase some or all our fees. We will always display

the result of the fee review on the website. If the payment plan fees have risen, you will also

know at this point. If we raise our fees and you have a treatment plan that is less than 90

days old, the prices on it will be valid for 3 months from the date of the rise. Treatment plans

that are older than 90 days will be subject to the new fees.

But why do you have to raise your fees?

The two major factors we take in into consideration when adjusting our fees are, our costs

and the market conditions. Our costs are all the things that we must pay for to run a practice,

there are all sorts of them ranging from cleaning and insurance to energy. By far the biggest

of these are the wages, the materials and the laboratory costs.

We want you to have confidence in our team and the best possible service and

treatment.

To do this we need the best people working for us. We think it’s only right to pay them a fair

wage, if we didn’t someone else would and we would lose them. The cost for materials and

laboratories varies hugely. We could reduce our fees by using cheaper, materials that don’t

have biocompatible properties, or find a cheaper laboratory, but we have found over the

years that this is often a false economy. In the world of dental materials and laboratories it is

almost universally true that you get what you pay for, if we used a cheaper filling material it

will not look as nice or last as long and may have undesirable ingredients. Use a cheaper

laboratory and the crown may not fit as well, look as natural or be as strong – ultimately

meaning that you will probably end up paying more. Dental material costs also change

based on the world market. Most of the items we use are manufactured in Europe, and any

changes to the relationship between Britain and its trading partners will cause costs to

fluctuate. We consider all these factors when deciding if we should raise our fees.

What exactly does Fair Pricing mean?

More than just the value of our services we also believe there are certain principles that are

important and we will try to uphold…

• We feel it an absolutely necessity to minimise our impact on the environment.

For example, we could pay less for our materials and services but having it from renewable

and reusable sources is important to us, and to our patients.

• We want to make use of the local talent we have in our area

We could use a large, centralised Laboratory who provide lab work to the whole country, or

even a lab based abroad but we would probably be speaking to different technicians for

each job, and we want to be able to pop in and see our lab craftsman when we have a

technically challenging treatment, we think that provides you with better service too.

• We want to build a relationship with our suppliers

We could probably switch the supplier of our materials to a large multinational, but they

rarely have good ethical credentials, and we believe going locally and building relationships

with our suppliers where possible. We think by following these principles we are giving you

the best possible service at good value, our impact on the environment is a small as it can

be and we are treating our staff and suppliers fairly, this is what we mean by fair pricing.

Why our prices say ‘from...’, and our treatment plans are ‘estimates’

• It’s hard to be completely accurate on our fee guide, for example for a white filling on our

guide it says (depending on size) “From”. So why do we say ‘from’ and not just give a fee? A

small filling at the front of the mouth is easy to get to and doesn’t use much material which

will be cheaper. A big filling at the back of the mouth will take longer, it will be more difficult

to get to and it will use more material, therefore the cost will be more.

• Sometimes there are things that we would want to repair before we even get to a filling, a

good example is gum disease. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that gum disease has

a considerable effect on your overall health, and we would always want to sort that out first.

We also try to look at the reasons why you are having the problems you are having, if you

need a filling is that signalling a problem with what you eat? Perhaps if we can help you fix

that we can stop you needing fillings in the future, but we won’t know that until we see you.

• Even when we have seen you and provide you with a treatment plan, the figures are an

estimate, we will try to explain in the plan why there might be variation, but the main reason

we must be unspecific is that we just can’t be sure of what’s going on until we have seen it.

A good example of this is where we may need to replace a failing crown. Even an X-ray

won’t show if there is decay under the crown, we won’t know the extent of the problem until

we have taken the old one off; this is why they are always estimates! Sometimes it might be

that you pay less than we were expecting for the same reason.

Why our prices may be more expensive than another practice.

We regularly check the prices of other practices in the area to ensure that we are

competitive, it is unlikely we are a great deal different but if you have seen some very low

prices on the internet you should proceed with caution, the saying ‘if something seems too

good to be true, then it probably is’ is as true in dentistry as in general life, here are some

things to check:

• Make sure that you are not getting ‘partial pricing’ For example, if you see a low price for

an implant make sure it is for the implant, and the crown. We have seen a quote for an

implant that didn’t include the crown and we believe that this is unfair pricing. The common

understanding is that an implant means the implant and the crown as a total price. Implants

sometimes have other cost associated with them based on your own circumstances, bone

grafts being the most common so always check and ask what additional cost there might be.

• As discussed above, the cost of materials varies considerably, and this will be the most

difficult thing for you to assess, but this could be another reason why prices vary. If you are

in any doubt check exactly what materials you will be getting ad what’s in them, we love it

when our patients ask us this as it shows they are really thinking about their health.

• The skill and experience of a dentist really does matter. At The Rock Dental Practice we

only select dentists, hygienists who have similar ethos, high ethical and environmental

standards, and excellent dental skills, we think it is fair to pay them what they are worth. We

have a wealth of experience of dealing with simple through to complex and challenging

cases.

I hope that this fair pricing page has answered any questions you may have. If you

haven’t found what you are looking for here, feel free to drop us a line and ask your question

over pricing, or indeed anything else.