Capacity and patient-demand planning for private dentistry

Marketing private treatment creates demand. Whether that demand becomes treatment depends on whether the practice has the time to see it. The BDA's overview of moving to private practice includes the same step: assessing your current patient base and considering what private care model is right for the practice ^[1]. Everything on this page uses your own figures. I do not give industry averages, because your diary is the only one that matters.

Supply: chair time you can offer

Take four recent, typical weeks from the appointment book and, for each clinician who will see private patients, record:

• the sessions they work and the chair hours in each;
• hours already booked, split into NHS, private and other (such as emergency slots held back);
• hours that went unused, including late cancellations and failed appointments;
• the hours you are willing to protect for private appointments going forward.

The last figure is a decision, not a measurement. In a mixed practice it should take account of commitments to existing patients. Write it down per clinician and per session, so reception knows where private appointments can go.

Demand: what you already see

Before buying any new demand, measure the demand you already have over the same period:

• enquiries about private treatment, by treatment and by where the patient heard about you;
• how many booked a consultation, how many attended, and how many started treatment;
• existing patients who asked about private options during routine appointments;
• enquiries turned away or put on a waiting list because there was no suitable slot.

The last line is often the most revealing. If private enquiries are already being turned away, the first constraint is capacity, and marketing would make it worse.

Matching the two

Convert demand into hours. For each treatment you want to grow, estimate the chair time a typical course takes in your practice, including the consultation and any reviews, and multiply by the number of patients you expect to start it. Compare that with the protected hours from the supply step. Three outcomes are possible:

1. Hours to spare: marketing can fill them, so plan it.
2. Roughly balanced: market gently, and watch the wait for a first appointment.
3. Not enough hours: free time first, through scheduling, session changes or recruitment.

A worked example

The figures here are round numbers for illustration only, not benchmarks. Suppose one clinician protects 8 chair hours a week for private work. Over four weeks that is 32 hours. The practice wants to grow a treatment whose typical course, from consultation to completion, takes 4 chair hours in that practice. Thirty-two hours supports about 8 new courses in that four-week period, before allowing for anything else that clinician does privately. If the practice already starts 6 such courses in a typical four weeks, there is room for about 2 more, and a campaign aimed at 20 would leave most of those patients waiting.

Replace every number with your own. The method matters, not the figures.

Keeping it current

Repeat the count monthly once marketing starts. The two figures to watch are the wait for a first private appointment and the share of enquiries that book. If the wait grows while bookings fall, demand has outrun capacity. The readiness worksheet includes capacity as an essential, and the preparation guide shows where it sits in the sequence.