5 Top Tips for Dental Practices To Consider When Choosing a Locum Dental Agency.

When your dental practice needs to book a locum dental nurse, what factors do you consider when choosing which dental agency to contact?

With more and more dental agencies than ever before to choose from, it can be tough to decide who gets your first call.

Over the next 5 weeks we’ll be sharing our top 5 tips on what factors you should consider when choosing, or changing, your locum dental agency.

To follow on from last week’s first ‘5 Factors’ blog about ‘Reputation’, this week we are focusing on ‘VALUE FOR MONEY!’

‘VALUE FOR MONEY!’

When looking into using a locum dental agency there are various factors that should be considered and while pricing is definitely high on the agenda, actual value for money should be your biggest cost consideration. When people think about value for money, a lot of the time they tend to think about who will provide them the lowest price. Choosing the lowest price isn’t always the best option with any kind of purchase. But having said this, you don’t want to pay over the odds either.

There are some seriously astronomically priced agencies out there at present taking full advantage of the fact that there are staff shortages in the dental industry. Things that need to be considered are; What do these agencies offer for their high prices that other more reasonably priced agencies don’t offer? Are they offering something extra to justify this price? Or just overcharging?

At the same time though practices need to be weary of the very cheaply priced agencies out there too. Why are they so cheap? Running a compliant employment agency and paying locum dental nurses a competitive wage is certainly not an inexpensive affair. So where are these agencies saving on their costs? Compliance and vetting? Can the agencies provide you with evidence that they have undertaken full compliance checks on their nurses? Are they flying under the radar of the HMRC? Are they paying for the correct insurances in order protect your business and your patients, such as employer’s liability and public liability insurances?

Although some of these considerations may not have a direct effect on your dental practice, they should still be taken into account when looking into choosing your locum dental agency.

S4S Team offer dental practices fantastic value for money. Not only do we supply your practice with expert locum dental nurses at a very fair price, we do so without cutting any compliance corners. All of our nurses go through a rigorous vetting process which we can provide you with evidence of. We have all the necessary insurances in place to protect your business and we operate with the highest levels of honesty, integrity, and always work in an ethical manner.

We also go above and beyond our competitors when offering your dental practice something more for your money. S4S Team have recently introduced our new online Locum Shift Rota where you can log into your personal account and check any dates you have booked with us and which nurses we have booked in for you. This can save you a lot of time when confirming bookings, double checking the dates you have booked and can really help ease the stresses of managing staff rotas. Value for money right there!

Keep your eyes peeled for next week's Top Tip where we'll be looking at 'Compliance'!