Dental bodies corporate and their approach to customer care

For many years the 27 bodies corporate registered with the General Dental Council were of little interest to most people in the UK dental profession, serving only as an anachronistic reminder of a bygone period. How times change. Although they still have only a small share of the dental market - with 4% of all dentists in the UK in early 1999 - they have expanded rapidly from a small base and are expected to continue to do so in the future. The reasons behind this growth are numerous and include such factors as: deregulation of the profession allowing dentists to advertise thus facilitating company branding; a general move away from NHS dentistry; a growing consumerism amongst the general public; precedents set by pharmacists and opticians; and, last but not least, the belief of venture capitalists amongst others that investment in dentistry will yield attractive returns.