Media record 86713

Media item: press coverage, archived by reference number

This page records the media item. Third-party coverage is the property of its publisher and is not reproduced here.

What follows is general information on the ownership of dental practices in Australia — a subject rarely explained to patients, and one that has changed substantially in twenty years.

How Australian dentistry is owned

Broadly, four models exist, and a practice's sign tells you nothing about which it is.

1. The owner-operated practice. One or several dentists own the business and treat in it. Historically the dominant model and still the most common by practice count.

2. The corporate group. A company owns many practices, often trading under retained local names or a single national brand. Dentists are employed or engaged as contractors. Some groups are listed on the ASX; some are private-equity owned; some are owned by health funds.

3. The health-fund-owned practice. Some private health insurers own dental clinics directly. This is legal and disclosed, and it is the reason some funds pay markedly higher benefits at their own centres.

4. Public and not-for-profit services. Community dental clinics, dental hospitals and university teaching clinics. In Victoria that includes the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne and the community dental network.

What ownership can and cannot change

This is the part worth being precise about.

What it cannot change:

The registration standard. Every dentist treating you is registered by the Dental Board of Australia on identical terms regardless of who owns the chair.
The Code of Conduct. Clinical decisions must be made in the patient's interest, and clinical autonomy is a professional obligation the practitioner carries personally. An employer's target is not a defence.
Your right to informed consent, to a second opinion, to your records, and to refuse.
Infection control standards, which are set nationally.
The advertising rules under section 133 of the National Law, which apply to the corporate advertiser as much as to the individual.

What it can change:

Who sets the appointment length, which is a business decision with clinical consequences.
Which materials and laboratories are used, where purchasing is centralised.
Referral patterns. A group with in-house specialists has an incentive to refer internally; whether that is good or bad depends entirely on whether the internal specialist is the right one.
How practitioners are paid, and therefore what the pay structure rewards.
Turnover. Employed dentists move more often than owners, and continuity of care is the thing patients most reliably lose when a practice changes hands.
What happens to your records on sale — they transfer with the business, under privacy obligations.

The disclosure question

A practice's ownership is not something you will necessarily find displayed anywhere, and many corporate-owned practices trade under the name of the dentist who founded them decades earlier. Trading under a business name is lawful in itself. It becomes a problem only where the presentation is actively misleading — for instance, implying independence that does not exist, or presenting an in-house referral as an independent one.

How to find out, if you want to know:

Ask. ‘Who owns this practice?’ is a fair question and a straightforward one to answer.
Check the ABN or ACN in the website footer or on your invoice, and search it free at abr.business.gov.au or on the ASIC register. The entity name is often the group.
Look at the privacy policy, which usually names the responsible entity and any group it discloses information to.
Ask whether a referral is internal, and whether an external option exists.

The arguments, honestly, both ways

For scale: capital for equipment a single-chair practice cannot fund; formal clinical governance and audit; structured continuing education; genuine emergency cover; locum cover so care does not stop when one dentist is ill; standardised sterilisation processes with real record-keeping; and career pathways that keep good clinicians in the profession.

Against scale: distance between the person making the decisions and the person in the chair; performance metrics that measure what is easy to count; higher practitioner turnover; and reduced practitioner autonomy over time and materials.

For owner-operation: the person treating you carries the reputational and financial consequences personally, sees you for decades, and controls their own appointment book.

Against owner-operation: isolation, no peer review, no audit, variable equipment, and no cover when they are away or retire.

Neither model is safer. The variable that predicts your experience is the individual practitioner and how the practice is actually run, not the ownership box it sits in.

What to do with this

Assess the clinician, not the brand. Look them up on the AHPRA register.
Ask about continuity. ‘Will I see you next time?’
Ask whether specialist referrals go inside or outside, and why.
Get quotes in writing with item numbers, which lets you compare across any ownership model.
Take major treatment plans away and think, and get a second opinion where the plan is large or irreversible.

Common questions

Is there a set price for dental work in Australia? Why do two quotes differ so much?

Because there is no national dental fee schedule, and each practice sets its own fees. That single fact explains most of what people find bewildering about dental pricing, and it applies in every ownership model above.

The nearest thing to a benchmark is a survey rather than a schedule. The Australian Dental Association's Dental Fees Survey 2022 summarised fees charged by its members in private practice as at 1 July 2022, from 3,819 valid responses out of 11,035 dentists invited — with data from 3,535 general practitioners, about 32% of the members invited. Across 122 items surveyed, it found that fees charged by general practitioners “appear to have increased by 3.7% during the two-year period since 1 July 2020”, which the ADA attributes partly to “competitive business conditions and intent to manage fee increases carefully”. The movement was uneven by category: the smallest increases were in Preventive Services and Periodontics (1.6%) and the largest in Orthodontics (6.9%).

On geography, the survey found “considerable variation in the fees charged within and between states” — note within, not only between. On average, general practitioners in South Australia and Western Australia charged the lowest fees and those in the ACT and the Northern Territory the highest, though the ADA flags that “due to the small sample in these two states, their results should be viewed with caution.”

Whether the absence of a schedule is a problem is genuinely contested. A submission to the Senate inquiry into the value and affordability of private health insurance argued for a “recommended (i.e. non-mandatory) Dental Fee Schedule” developed by government, on the basis that its absence “may have contributed to the comparatively high cost of dental care in Australia” and disadvantages rural patients in particular, and observed that “there is no public body for patients to complain to about Australia's high dental fees.” That is one submitter's contention to a parliamentary inquiry, not a finding of it — read it as an argument, and note that the same submission is openly critical of the profession and of the ADA.

The practical consequence for you is unaffected by who is right. Ask for the quote in writing with ADA item numbers. Item numbers are what make two quotes comparable at all, and what let you check a health fund benefit before you commit. See the price guide and understanding your treatment.

Why does a practice ask for my health fund details before anyone has looked at my teeth?

Usually for a mundane reason — so the front desk can process a claim on the spot — and it is still a fair thing to ask about, because it has been raised as a concern at parliamentary level.

The submission cited above puts the objection bluntly: it argues that “Dental practitioners should not be requesting, collecting, or storing patient health fund status, or data”, and recounts the submitter's own experience that “the disclosure of my private health fund status has resulted in excessive and unnecessary dental treatment or ‘over-servicing', and the addition of extraneous items”, including the card being “swiped via HICAPS at reception; seemingly to check my remaining annual benefits”. It also notes that the Productivity Commission's Data Availability and Use draft report cited the ADA's comment that “some private health insurers that operate practices may have access to the identity of patients receiving treatment through HICAPS”, and asks that the privacy of that system be investigated.

That is one person's account and one advocacy argument, not established fact, and this page is not suggesting it describes any particular practice. But it identifies a real conflict worth being awake to: a plan drawn up with one eye on your remaining annual limit is not the same as a plan drawn up from your mouth.

Two questions that cost nothing. “Can I have the treatment plan and the item numbers first, and check my cover myself?” And, if you want the sharper version: “Would this plan be different if I had no health fund at all?” A good answer to the second is a straightforward no, with reasons. See Understanding Your Treatment and the privacy policy for what a practice does with the information it holds about you.

Does cost actually stop people going to the dentist?

On the available evidence, for a very large minority. An Australian Institute of Health and Welfare survey, cited in the parliamentary submission above, found that “nearly a third of people aged 5 or older (32%) avoided or delayed visiting a dentist due to cost”. That figure is from 2013, so treat it as the scale of the problem rather than as today's number — but nothing in the intervening period has made dentistry cheaper.

If cost is the barrier, three things are worth knowing before you defer indefinitely.

For children, there is a Commonwealth benefit that is under-claimed. The Child Dental Benefits Schedule, administered by Services Australia, provides up to $1,158 for each eligible child over 2 consecutive calendar years. Eligibility needs two things in the same calendar year: the child is “between 0 and 17 years old for at least one day that calendar year”, and “you or they get an eligible payment at least once that calendar year”. It covers check-ups, X-rays, cleaning, fissure sealing, fillings, root canals and extractions, and excludes orthodontic work, cosmetic work and anything done in a hospital. Unused money does not roll on forever — if it is not used inside the two calendar years, “you can't use the remaining funds”. Confirm current figures with Services Australia. See Child Dental Benefit Schedule.

For adults on a concession card, there is a public system, which in Victoria includes the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne and the community dental network named above. Waiting times are real and often long, which is exactly why it is worth joining a list before something becomes urgent rather than after. Eligibility rules are set by the state service, so check them directly rather than assuming.

And the cheapest appointment is the one that stops a problem getting bigger. A check and a clean are a fraction of the cost of the work that becomes necessary when decay reaches the nerve or gum disease reaches the bone — see How often should I go to the dentist? and Dental Cleans & Hygienists. Ask, too, whether treatment can be staged over months so the cost is spread, and ask what the least expensive reasonable option is. Both are legitimate requests.

If a company owns the practice, who is actually accountable when something goes wrong?

Both the individual and the company, through different channels — and knowing which is which saves a great deal of time.

The practitioner is accountable personally, and that cannot be contracted away. The Dental Board of Australia's Scope of practice registration standard applies to every practitioner it registers and “requires dental practitioners to practise within the scope of their education, training, and competence at all times.” It says nothing about employers. Concerns about a practitioner's health, conduct or performance go to the regulator: AHPRA's guidelines describe the National Boards as responsible for “managing complaints and concerns (notifications) about the health, conduct or performance of practitioners”, with two states routing them elsewhere — in New South Wales to the Health Care Complaints Commission and the Health Professional Councils Authority, and in Queensland jointly to the Office of the Health Ombudsman and the National Boards and AHPRA. Complaints about a health service rather than a practitioner — the practice, the fees, records access, how a complaint was handled — go to the health complaints body in your own state, which in Victoria is the Health Complaints Commissioner.

The company is accountable too, and the enforcement powers differ. AHPRA's guidelines are explicit that for registered practitioners the regulator may “investigate a practitioner's conduct”, “impose conditions on the practitioners' registration, such as restricting their ability to advertise their services”, “take disciplinary action in a panel or tribunal”, and “prosecute, which may lead to a financial penalty” — whereas for “corporate entities, business and individuals who are not registered health practitioners, the tools available under the National Law include the power to prosecute which may lead to a financial penalty.” Read those two lists side by side: the registration-based sanctions have no counterpart for a company, because a company holds no registration. On advertising specifically, the maximum penalty per offence for a body corporate was increased to $120,000 under the 2022 amendments to the National Law, against $60,000 for an individual.

One consequence worth drawing out. Because the advertiser for these purposes is “whoever has control over the advertising”, a claim on a corporate group's website or social media is the group's responsibility, not the local dentist's — so if what troubles you is a marketing claim rather than your treatment, the complaint is aimed at the entity, and the ABN or ACN search described above is how you identify it.

None of which is the first step for a clinical problem you simply want put right. Raise that with the practice in writing, ask for your records and radiographs at the same time, and keep the correspondence. The regulator handles conduct; it does not order refunds or remakes.

The practice has changed hands. What should I check?

Four things, and none of them requires a confrontation.

Whether your clinician is still there. This is the change patients feel, and the page above is candid that continuity is what is most reliably lost. Ask by name when you book, not when you arrive.

Whether your records came across. They should have transferred with the business under the practice's privacy obligations, but the useful move is to request a copy for yourself — clinical notes, radiographs and any scans — so that you hold a set independent of whoever owns the building next year. Ask what the practice's own privacy policy says about access and about any fee for copies, and ask in writing.

Whether a quoted plan still stands. A treatment plan and its fees were quoted by the previous entity. Ask for confirmation in writing, with the same item numbers, that the plan and the price are unchanged, and ask specifically about anything already paid for and not yet delivered.

Whether the referral arrangements changed. If a group now owns the practice and employs its own specialists, a referral that used to go outside may now go inside. That may be perfectly good for you, and it is still worth asking who you are being sent to, why that person, and whether an external option exists — the same question set out in the disclosure section above. See Why would I need to see a dental specialist? and Second Opinions & Corrective Dentistry.

Practical details

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.

Every practitioner's registration and any specialist entry can be verified free on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au.

This page records a media item. Third-party content is not reproduced. This item is archived by reference number and no publication date is recorded for it, so read it as a historical record rather than as current material; ownership arrangements, fees, rebates and the rules that govern them all change, and anything you intend to rely on should be confirmed with the body responsible for it. The material above is general information about ownership structures in Australian dentistry and is not a description of any particular business, and it is not legal or financial advice. Fee, complaint and access figures are quoted from the publications named, with their dates; statements drawn from a submission to a parliamentary inquiry are that submitter's own and are identified as such.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.