Figures from two or three years ago show that there are approximately 35,000 dentists working in the UK and some 12,000 practices. The sum is really not all that difficult as it shows that there are roughly three dentists working in each practice.

Now some practices will have more, and some will have less. Some will be sole practitioners, while a few other practices may have six or eight dentists working in them. But on average it is three, and that can present a considerable problem.

If you have just three dentists working in a practice and one of them goes sick, or is off work for any other reason, it reduces the practice staff by one third. And that means that if that is your practice, you cannot provide all the services to your patients that you normally do. In fact, you would be cancelling appointments left, right, and centre in most cases, simply because you cannot keep up with the workload.

There is, of course, an answer, and it is called hiring a locum. That will bring your practice up to scratch and you can then continue to provide the services that your patients need. No problem!

Well, not necessarily. It rather depends how long the dentist who is off sick is away from the practice. If your partner catches Covid and is only going to be away for a couple of weeks, it is not too serious a matter. Certainly, you will have to cancel some appointments, but it is not a disaster.

However, what happens if your partner has been the victim of a road accident and is gong to be away for months? What if he, or she, is called up for jury service? Sure, that doesn’t happen to everyone, but yet it does happen. Jury service is one of those things that can go on for weeks, or even months. Yes, it might be over in three days, but then again it might not. It’s no good saying that your practice is going to have problems. It is a legal requirement, unless you can show very good reason why you or your partner should not have to do it.

But you can keep your practice up and running by hiring a locum, and there are several of them available, often at very short notice.

That is not the tricky part.

This Is The Tricky Part

The tricky part is that locums are not cheap. In fact, they are extremely expensive. That is why those dentists who undertake locum work do it in the first place: they can earn very good money. In a sense, they have got you over a barrel.

So, in order to keep your practice up and running and your patients happy and cared for, it is going to cost you a lot of money to do it. If one of your partners is off work for several weeks, or even months, it will make a very big difference to your practice takings.

This is the very reason that when you run a dental practice you should take out dentist locum insurance.

Sure, it may not happen. If you live in an area where there were coal mines – which around 25% of the population does, apparently – then you might not suffer from sinkholes or the increasing amount of flooding that is occurring. But do you want to take that risk?

Dentist locum insurance will cover all of the extra costs associated with hiring a locum, whether you need him or her for a month or for several months.

At Approachable Locum Insurance we are specialists in exactly this area, and we can provide you with locum insurance that is tailored to your specific needs.