On 25th March, Neil Carmichael, the Association of Dental Group’s (ADG) Executive Chair, joined a panel of experts at the HBI (Healthcare Business International) conference 2025 in Paris to debate why nations can expect to spend less on healthcare, if they invest more in oral health. The conference, attended by over 800+ delegates from 40 countries brings together CEOs from a multitude of healthcare sectors and the investment community across EMEA and beyond. Neil who was joined on the oral healthcare spending panel by Sara Dalmasso, EVP, Head of Enterprise Solutions at Straumann Group, Ángel Manotas, Managing Director, Alantra, Marco Mazevet, Consultant, Candesic and Anni Seaborne, Head of General Dentistry at Bupa Dental Care took the opportunity to reinforce the ADG’s leading message regarding the urgent need to fill the gap in the dental workforce.
With tooth decay affecting every nation’s population, taking steps to stop this largely preventable disease, that can affect an individual’s overall health, makes sense for wellbeing as well as budgeting. The issues in UK dentistry are multi-faceted, and so the ADG, the profession’s trade association which represents its ‘mixed economy’, is best placed to give the expert overview on the challenges and solutions.
With a 3,000 plus gap in the UK’s dental workforce ADG members, who run over 2,000 dental practices up and down the UK are deeply concerned about the significant gap in the dental workforce which currently means that over 3,000 vacant positions for dentists remain unfilled. Recent UK Government announcements to deliver a scheme designed to enable 700,000 extra urgent care appointments remains impractical if the dental workforce isn’t boosted.
Neil Carmichael, Executive Chair, Association of Dental Groups, said: “Interventions that focus on cutting through the red tape our profession is struggling with are crucial. We have hundreds of fully trained dentists from overseas having to take on unskilled jobs in the UK – rather than treat patients who are desperate to see a dentist. We simply cannot continue to tolerate this waste of training and skills.
“Investment in recruitment, support for dental schools and improvements in the Overseas Recruitment Examination (ORE) access are fundamental to recovery. We know that conditions such as dementia, cancer and cardiovascular disease are linked to oral health diseases. Acting now to get the delivery of dentistry right in the UK will not only give patients the oral care they need – but save our government in the long-term.”
