A crown is 12 UDAs on NHS or £600 privately. Your accountant tells you this once a year. Your agent tells you every week.
Every mixed NHS/private dental practice faces the same strategic question: how do you balance NHS contract delivery with private revenue maximisation? The economics are stark — an NHS Band 3 crown generates roughly £28 in UDA value (12 UDAs at ~£2.30 each), while the same crown privately is £500-800. But you need to hit your NHS target or face clawback. Most practice owners make this calculation intuitively, or defer to their dental accountant at year-end. Your NHS/private mix agent continuously models the relationship between your NHS contract performance and your private revenue, recommending the optimal balance week by week as the contract year progresses.
What Your Agent Actually Does
Your agent models the optimal balance between NHS contract delivery and private revenue — so you hit your UDA target and maximise practice income, not one or the other.
Models the NHS/private balance continuously
Your agent maintains a live model of your contract: UDAs delivered, UDAs remaining, private revenue generated, and the interplay between them. As the contract year progresses, the optimal balance shifts — your agent adjusts recommendations accordingly.
Identifies conversion opportunities
For certain treatments, the financial difference between NHS and private is enormous. Your agent identifies where patient conversations about private options would have the biggest impact on practice revenue — while keeping NHS delivery on track.
Factors in clinician differences
Different associates generate different NHS/private ratios. Your agent tracks each clinician's mix and identifies where the balance could be improved — which associates are under-delivering UDAs because of high private conversion, and which are over-delivering NHS at the expense of private revenue.
Runs scenario planning
What if you shifted 10% of Band 2 cases to private? What if you reserved Friday afternoons for private-only appointments? What if a high-private associate leaves? Your agent models the impact on both contract performance and revenue before you make changes.
Produces weekly practice intelligence briefings
A short weekly report: NHS delivery pace, private revenue trajectory, recommended actions, and any emerging risks. Your practice manager reads it in five minutes and knows exactly where the practice stands.
The real numbers.
| Dental accountant advisory and benchmarking | £2,000–£4,000/year |
| Practice manager time on manual analysis | £1,000–£2,000/year |
| Revenue lost from suboptimal mix decisions | £5,000–£20,000+/year |
| Realistic annual cost | £4,000–£8,000 |
| Agent build (one-off, configured to your contract and revenue data) | £4,000–£6,000 |
| Monthly running costs (hosting + AI usage) | £150–£250/month |
| NHS contract and UDA rate updates | Included in first year |
| Realistic first-year total | £5,800–£9,000 |
The NHS/private mix question is the most strategically important decision in a mixed practice — and it's almost always made on gut feeling. Practice owners know they need to hit their UDA target. They know private work is more profitable. But the dynamic relationship between the two — how shifting one affects the other, clinician by clinician, month by month — is too complex for intuition.
Your agent makes the invisible visible. The optimal mix isn't a fixed ratio — it changes as the contract year progresses, as associates come and go, and as patient demand shifts. Your agent tracks all of this and recommends accordingly.
Good fit / not a fit.
This works brilliantly for:
- Mixed NHS/private dental practices trying to optimise revenue while hitting UDA targets
- Practice owners who feel they're leaving money on the table but can't quantify it
- Multi-site dental groups managing different NHS contracts with different targets
- Practices where associates have very different NHS/private ratios
This probably isn't for you if:
- Your practice is 100% NHS or 100% private — no mix to optimise
- You have a dental business consultant who provides this analysis regularly
- Your NHS contract is very small and the mix decision is straightforward
Let's talk.
We'll start with your contract details, your current NHS/private split, your associate structure, and what reporting you currently get from your accountant or practice management system. Usually a 15-minute conversation.
hello@nimblecroft.com