When one falls, all may follow: Is your practice protected?

By Graham Hutton, Specialist Financial Planner at Wesleyan Financial Services

If you’re a principal dentist, imagine this all-too-real scenario: it’s Monday morning when the phone rings. Your practice manager is off sick. There’s no warning, no handover, and no indication of when they’ll be back.

Suddenly, you’re no longer just focused on patients. You’re sorting out the staff rota, trying to decipher the lab order system, fielding patient queries, and wondering how the business finances will hold up if this continues into the long-term.

In many dental practices, one key person going off sick can feel like the first domino tipping. The rest, such as admin, operations, finances and patient care, can follow in quick succession.

It’s a fragile balance, especially in a small or close-knit team where each person plays a pivotal role.

Plan for the unexpected, not just the everyday

You wouldn’t run the clinical side of your practice without sterilisation protocols or emergency procedures. The same logic applies to the business side. Without financial safety nets in place, the impact of one team member being off, whether it’s for a week or a year, can have long-term consequences.

Start by identifying the roles that quietly hold your practice together behind the scenes. You or a specialist practitioner are an easy place to start. Your practice manager, lead nurse, or treatment coordinator might not be treating patients, but their absence can be just as disruptive. Without someone covering patients, overseeing the rota, managing suppliers, handling complaints, or ensuring compliance, pressure quickly piles up on the rest of the team, often landing on you.

Having a contingency plan means you can act swiftly when someone crucial is out of action. Whether it’s access to temporary staffing, training others to step up, or having a financial buffer in the form of Key Person Protection or locum cover to outsource tasks, these measures allow the practice to keep running without dropping standards or burning out the team.

The real benefit is stability. Your financial performance is maintained, patients continue to receive the same level of care, staff morale stays intact, and your own stress levels don’t spiral.

When it’s you who’s out of action

Your income is directly linked to your ability to work. If illness, injury, or a personal emergency forces you to stop, the financial impact can be immediate. Staff wages don’t pause. Equipment leases and supplier contracts keep ticking over. Without a plan, that pressure can escalate fast and make recovery even harder.

As a practice owner, you may be used to being the one who steps in, fixes problems, and keeps things running. But if you’re facing a serious illness or need time off to recover, it’s just as vital to protect your own finances as it is the business. Knowing your household bills, mortgage payments, or family responsibilities are covered means you can focus on getting better without the added pressure of financial stress.

Keep the practice standing

When it comes to the financial stability of your practice, it follows the same principle of long-term dental wellbeing – prevention is better than cure. No one expects illness or absence to hit, but when it does, the fallout can be swift and destabilising.

At Wesleyan Financial Services, we understand how vulnerable a dental practice can become when the first domino falls. That’s why we offer specialist financial advice tailored to dentists and practice owners on the protection required to break the chain reaction before it starts.

You can speak to a dental Specialist Financial Planner to find out how to build resilience into your practice. Visit Wesleyan.co.uk/dental or call 0808 149 9416.

Please note: Charges may apply. You will not be charged until you have agreed to the services you require and the associated costs. Learn more at www.wesleyan.co.uk/charges.

About Graham

Graham Hutton is a dental Specialist Financial Planner at Wesleyan Financial Services, supporting dentists with the intricacies of financial planning from business succession and retirement exit strategies to commercial investments.

Wesleyan Financial Services Ltd (Registered in England and Wales No. 1651212) is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Registered Office: Colmore Circus, Birmingham B4 6AR. Telephone: 0345 351 2352. Calls may be recorded to help us provide, monitor and improve our services to you.