Northern Ireland Executive
17 Aug 2022, 16:30 GMT+10
NHS Digital today released details of the earnings and expenses of General Dental Services (GDS) dentists in Northern Ireland in 2020/21. This is the fourteenth set of earnings and expenses data that have been produced for Northern Ireland.
Previously, separate country reports were produced; the Earnings and Expenses report has been published as a UK report for each of the past eight years. This is the fifth year that the entire series of the Dental Earnings and Expenses Estimates has been published in one instalment. In previous years, this report was issued in two instalments, entitled Initial Analysis and Additional Analysis. Below we present key points for Northern Ireland only.
It is important to note that values are not comparable between countries due to differing contractual arrangements and the use of different methods to determine dental type in each country.
Note, the source for all figures is NHS Digital.
The report presents key findings in terms of average gross earnings, total expenses, and taxable income estimates by dental type and contract type for dentists in Northern Ireland. The report also contains a detailed breakdown of expenses by dental type, age, gender and activity demographics. The Dental Working Patterns Survey was not carried out in 2020/21 due to the impact on working hours during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additional analyses based on data usually collected by the survey such as weekly working hours, percentage of time spent on NHS dentistry and business arrangement were therefore not available for the 2020/21 report.
The first cases of COVID-19 in the UK were confirmed late January 2020 and the first UK-wide lockdown was announced in March 2020. Most routine dentistry was paused between April and June 2020. This was followed by a period of recovery and restoration of services throughout the remainder of 2020/21. The pandemic is also likely to have impacted on expenses incurred during this period.
It is not meaningful to discuss the average earnings of an average dentist, as there is great variation in the different financial arrangements. However, the key findings among self-employed GDS Northern Ireland dentists in 2020/21 are given below. Where statistically permissible, comparisons for the main findings have been made with the 2019/20 results; however, comparisons should be made with caution. Factors which can affect comparisons include: changes in the dental workforce, changes in type and volume of activity per dentist, changes to allowances, and VAT changes. It is also necessary to consider the absolute changes between years, as well as changes in percentage terms.
(1) Within the report, percentage changes presented are calculated on unrounded data, while all earning and expenses data are rounded by NHS Digital to the nearest Pound 100.
(2) As these results are based on a sample of dentists, year-on-year differences between income before tax estimates have been tested for statistical significance at a 95 per cent confidence level. An increase or decrease in estimates that is statistically significant is likely to be a genuine change, rather than resulting from chance, and means that users can have greater confidence that any apparent differences are applicable to the entire population in question.
(3) Note that a designated dentist in each practice is paid a practice allowance under GDS to help address the increasing running costs of health service dental practices in relation to the provision of high quality premises, health and safety, staffing support and information collection and provision. For technical reasons, it has not been possible to off-set this allowance against expenses and the expense element will therefore be inflated.
(4) The other category includes a variety of expenses including laboratory costs, materials costs, advertising, promotion and entertainment, bad debts, alternative finance payments, interest for businesses where annual turnover is less than Pound 85,000, and expenses for businesses where turnover is low and a more detailed breakdown is not available.
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