Everything under one roof

Smile Solutions works on the premise that a larger practice benefits both patients and practitioners, and that the benefit comes from structure rather than size for its own sake.

Here is what the structure actually changes.

All your practitioners in one place

The team includes general dentists, hygienists, and Dental Board–registered specialists in orthodontics, periodontics, endodontics, prosthodontics, paediatric dentistry, and oral and maxillofacial surgery — all working in the same building.

What that changes in practice

Clinicians can collaborate with their peers. A corridor conversation replaces a letter and a phone call.

Referral is straightforward, because the specialist has immediate access to your dental file — the imaging, the notes and the history are already there. No records to request, no imaging to repeat.

Complex cases are coordinated rather than fragmented. Not all cases are simple, and some need treatment by multiple clinicians across different areas of dentistry. With everyone in one place, the peer review process can be coordinated and properly planned rather than assembled after the fact — what happens when multiple specialists need to collaborate sets out how that sequencing works.

Care passes to the right person. Handing a case to a clinician who specialises in that field, or has a strong interest in that area, promotes better comprehensive care than one clinician attempting everything.

What a dental specialist actually is

This is worth setting out properly, because “specialist” is a regulated term in Australia and it is used loosely almost everywhere else.

A registered dental specialist has completed a dental degree, usually several years of general practice, and then a further three-year full-time postgraduate specialist qualification, and is entered on the Dental Board of Australia's specialist register. Only practitioners on that register may use the protected title.

There are thirteen recognised dental specialties in Australia. Six of them practise at Smile Solutions. A term is not a specialty simply because it appears on a website — “cosmetic dentist”, “implant dentist”, “sleep dentist”, “laser dentist” and “holistic dentist” are descriptions of interest or practice emphasis, not registered specialties and not protected titles. A general dentist may do excellent implant or cosmetic work; the point is that the words carry no regulatory meaning, so they cannot be relied on the way a specialist registration can.

You can check any practitioner free, in under a minute, on the AHPRA public register.

Who does what

Most dentistry does not need a specialist. Check-ups, cleans, fillings, straightforward extractions, most crowns and most root canals are general-dentist work, done well by general dentists every day. A referral is for the cases where the anatomy, the complexity or the risk justifies it — why would I need to see a dental specialist? works through the usual triggers — and a good general dentist is the person who decides which is which.

How a referral works here

1. You see a general dentist, who examines, takes any imaging needed, and forms a plan.
2. If specialist input is warranted, they say so and explain why — including what would happen if you did nothing, and what the alternatives are.
3. The referral is internal. Your file, radiographs and photographs are already accessible, so the specialist is not starting from nothing.
4. The specialist does their part and, where relevant, the general dentist completes the rest — the common pattern in implant work, where surgical placement and the final restoration are separate stages.
5. You are entitled to be referred elsewhere. An internal referral is convenient and usually appropriate, but it is still a referral within one business, and asking to be sent outside, or to get another opinion, is entirely normal. Second Opinions & Corrective Dentistry.

Hours

A large team also makes it possible to offer extended hours, and out-of-hours emergency dental care.

Dental emergencies do not restrict themselves to business hours, which is why weekend appointments are available for emergency treatment.

Emergency capacity is a function of team size: a solo practice cannot hold slots open the way a large one can.

Some things cannot wait for any dental appointment. Facial swelling, difficulty swallowing or breathing, uncontrolled bleeding, or a suspected jaw fracture are hospital emergency department presentations — or call 000. Emergency Dentistry.

Technology, and why scale matters for it

Sharing the cost of equipment across a large team is a substantial benefit.

At this scale the practice can purchase and maintain advanced equipment that all clinicians can use, including:

• CEREC — single-visit milled porcelain restorations
• Lasers
• Digital radiology
• Dental microscopy
• 3D imaging

The patient-facing consequence is not that the practice owns impressive machines. It is that treatment options exist which might otherwise be overlooked, or simply unavailable — because in a smaller practice the equipment has to be paid for out of one clinician's caseload.

Owning a device is not a reason to use it. The question for any proposed treatment is whether it is the right approach for your tooth, not whether the practice has the equipment for it. Our Technology.

Cosmetic dentistry

As the field continues to grow, the practice has a number of dentists with a strong interest in cosmetic dentistry, covering teeth whitening, orthodontics, dental implants and gum treatment, with the technology and materials those treatments require.

“Cosmetic dentistry” is not a registered specialty — it is a grouping of treatments drawn from restorative, prosthodontic and orthodontic work. Much of it is irreversible: veneers and crowns require permanent removal of tooth structure, and once done the tooth will always need a restoration. Ask what is irreversible, what the alternatives are, and what maintenance the result will need over twenty years, before agreeing to anything. Cosmetic Dentistry.

What this is for

Patients no longer spending time, energy and money going from clinic to clinic for different treatments.

Whether you need braces from an orthodontist, a root canal, or wisdom teeth removed, it can be done in the one place.

Come in for a consultation with a general dentist to discuss the options — and if a specialist is needed, you can be referred without leaving the building.

Common questions

Does seeing a specialist cost more than seeing a general dentist?

Usually, and the difference can be substantial. Australia has no national dental fee schedule, so every practice sets its own fees and there is no official benchmark to check a quote against — a consumer submission to the 2017 Senate inquiry into the value and affordability of private health insurance made exactly that complaint, noting that “private patients can go to multiple dentists and receive conflicting diagnoses and widely varying quotes for unpredictable dental fees”.

The nearest independent indication of the gap is the Australian Dental Association's Dental Fees Survey 2022. Of the 284 respondents who identified themselves as specialists, the fifth (20 per cent) who charged an hourly rate reported a mean of $921 an hour and a median of $800, ranging between $450 and $1,500. The ADA attaches a warning to its own figures: the specialist response rate was low, and the specialist results “should be interpreted with considerable caution”. They are an order-of-magnitude guide, not a price list.

The practical step is the same either way. Ask for the item numbers and a written estimate before you agree, and ask what the same treatment would cost if a general dentist did it. Price Guide · Payment Plans.

What does the AHPRA register actually tell me, and what does it not?

The Dental Board of Australia says Ahpra “publishes an online register of all dental practitioners that provides the profession and the public with up-to-date information about a dental practitioner's registration status”, and that the register “also includes details of the specialty or specialties for dentists who hold specialist registration”. So it settles three things: whether the person is registered at all, what they are registered as, and whether a specialist title they use is genuine.

It does not tell you how often that practitioner performs the procedure you need, what their complication rate is, what they charge, or whether a stated “special interest” corresponds to any assessed qualification. Those you have to ask about directly, and a straight answer to “how many of these do you do in a year?” is a reasonable thing to expect.

Registration also sits on top of Board registration standards for continuing professional development and recency of practice, which is why a non-practising or lapsed entry is meaningful rather than a technicality.

Which are the thirteen recognised specialties?

The Dental Board lists thirteen dental specialties approved by the Australian Health Workforce Ministerial Council: dento-maxillofacial radiology, endodontics, forensic odontology, oral and maxillofacial surgery, oral medicine, oral and maxillofacial pathology, oral surgery, orthodontics, paediatric dentistry, periodontics, prosthodontics, public health dentistry (community dentistry), and special needs dentistry.

Six of those practise here. Several of the others are hospital, laboratory or population-level fields that a private practice would not host at all. Under the Board's specialist registration standard an applicant must also have completed a minimum of two years of general dental practice and met every requirement for general registration as a dentist before specialist registration is granted.

If a title you have been offered is not on that list of thirteen, it is a description of someone's interest or practice emphasis. That is not a criticism of the clinician — it simply means the words carry no regulatory weight and cannot be checked on a register.

Is a larger practice actually better for my treatment?

We can find no independent evidence either way, and it is worth saying so plainly. No Australian regulator or professional body publishes a comparison of clinical outcomes by practice size, so a claim in either direction — including ours — should be read as a claim about convenience and coordination, not about clinical quality.

What scale demonstrably changes is logistics: records and imaging do not have to be requested or repeated, the order of work between clinicians can be planned in advance, and emergency capacity is easier to hold open. Whether the particular clinician treating you is the right fit for your case is a separate question, and it is answered the same way in a practice of one or of a hundred — ask what they propose, why, what the alternatives are, and what happens if you do nothing.

What should I ask before agreeing to a plan that involves more than one clinician?

Ask for the plan in writing, and check five things:

• Sequence and ownership. Who does which stage, in what order, and who is answerable for the result as a whole.
• Cost per stage, with item numbers, and when each payment falls due. A single whole-of-plan figure is not enough to give your health fund for a benefit estimate.
• What is irreversible. Crown and veneer preparation removes tooth structure permanently; an extraction obviously does. Ask which steps close off options and which do not.
• What happens if a stage does not hold — who re-does it, on what timeframe, and at whose cost.
• What happens if you do nothing, or only part of it. Staging work across two financial years is sometimes sensible and sometimes stores up a problem; the difference should be explained rather than assumed.

You are entitled to take a written plan away and have it reviewed elsewhere before you commit. Second Opinions & Corrective Dentistry · Understanding your treatment.

Does having everyone in one building mean my health fund pays more?

No. Extras benefits are paid per item number against your annual limits, and those limits do not move because several practitioners work at the same address. What one site can avoid is paying twice — for the same radiographs, or for a second examination — because the next practice had no access to the first one's records.

Two things are worth knowing. A written pre-treatment estimate listing item numbers lets you ask your fund what it will pay before you commit, which is the only reliable way to find out. And the 2017 Senate inquiry received a consumer submission arguing that handing over fund details at reception can itself invite extra items being added to a plan; you are not obliged to produce your card before the treatment has been discussed. That submission is one consumer's account, not a regulator's finding, but the underlying advice — agree the clinical plan first, then work out who pays for it — is sound.

Related reading

Dentists & Registered Specialists · Specialist Care · Complex Dentistry · General Dentistry · Our Team · Understanding your treatment · Is a bigger dental practice better? · What does a multi-clinician practice make possible? · Price Guide

Practical details

Written by Dr Kia Pajouhesh, managing director of Smile Solutions.

Specialist registration for any practitioner can be verified free on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au, or by calling 1300 419 495.

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment. Getting here: Location.

Published 4 May 2017. This page describes how the practice is structured and what the recognised dental specialties are. It is not a claim that treatment at any one practice produces better clinical outcomes than treatment elsewhere, and practice structure is one factor among many. The list of specialties available is as at the date of publication and may change; check the current team.

General information only — it is not a diagnosis, a treatment plan, a quote or a promise of any particular clinical outcome, and it does not replace advice from your treating practitioner. All dental treatment carries risks, some of it is irreversible, and whether any procedure is appropriate for you can only be determined after examination. Fees are indicative and subject to change; confirm at your consultation.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.