A summary of some of the key points are as follows:-
- All routine and non-urgent dental care should stop.
- All practices should establish either independently or in collaboration with others a remote urgent care telephone triage service.
- Patients unable to be dealt with by the remote service should be referred to the appropriate part of the Local Urgent Dental Care System. Some practices may need to become part of the Local Urgent Dental Care System.
Contracts & Funding
The year end reconciliation dates have been amended to account for the impact of COVID-19.
Contract delivery will be calculated on a March 2019 to February 2020 rather than April 2019 to March 2020.
2020/2021 Contracts & Cashflow
The NHS is to continue to make monthly payments at 1/12 of the contract value to practices.
During the period of COVID-19 response contract delivery is to be assumed to have been made.
This is conditional upon practices offering all available workforce capacity to other areas (see section C of letter).
Practices are to ensure that all workforce including associates, non-clinical and others are continued to be paid at previous levels.
An agreed and fair reduction for variable costs will be applied to all contract values.
These arrangements will continue for a fixed number of months with an agreed end date.
Practices benefiting from continued NHS funding will not be eligible to seek any wider government assistance to small businesses which could be duplicative.
See BDA update from their website below as published Thursday 2 April 2020 at 7pm:
“NHS and private financial support for mixed practices in England.
Following ongoing dialogue with NHS England, we now understand that the application of the principles, outlined in their preparedness letter of 25 March 2020, for practices benefitting from continued NHS funding, are intended to apply to NHS income only. Contract holders wishing to claim against additional Government support schemes should ensure that this is in relation to the proportion of private revenue only.
In line with the methodology of determining private and NHS income used for business rates reimbursements, contractors are advised to use the proportion of gross income that relates to GDS/PDS contract value as NHS revenue, the balance being private share. Those contractors who claim business rates reimbursements will have this data readily available.
NHS England expects that as part of the 2020/2021 reconciliation process practices will be expected to declare that they have not applied for any duplicative Government funding. They will need to provide evidence of the portion of NHS/private income used in any applications for additional support.”
This is welcome news for mixed practices who were concerned about having to choose between NHS funding or furloughing assistance from the Government.
If you need help working out how this will affect your finances going forward please speak to your usual Dodd & Co contact.
For information on support available for Dental Practices in Scotland please see our link here.
