Therapist-led care: The First Year in Numbers
In January 2025, The Gentle Touch converted fully to a therapist-led care model. If you want the story of how that transition felt and how patients responded, that is in a separate post. This one is just the numbers!
The headline figures
Practice revenue grew by 28.4% while total procedures fell by 10.8%. That combination tells you everything about what therapist-led care does: it shifts the clinical mix upward, not the volume.
Income per working day increased for every clinician. All four dentists. The increases ranged from 15.1% to 35% (and this didn’t occur through working harder).
At the same time (January 2025) I reduced my own working days from four to three per week, finishing the year with 44 fewer clinical days than the year before. My income per day rose from £1,686 to £2,275.
What happened to check-ups
In 2024, the four dentists carried out 2,376 check-up appointments between them. In 2025, that fell to 1,015. A reduction of 1,361 appointments, or 57.3%. At 15 minutes each, that is approximately 340 hours of released dentist chair time, close to ten full working weeks returned to restorative care.
Those appointments transferred to the dental therapist team, who now deliver them as 45-minute TLC appointments: comprehensive check-up, guided biofilm therapy, iTero scan, photographs, Pearl AI-assisted radiograph review, and a written report to the patient. Patients receive considerably more than they did before. Our satisfaction rate following the transition was 98%.
The onlay data
Our patient population is older (average age is 60), and all the clinicians have a special interest in the protection of badly damaged teeth. Onlays and overlays fill our days and equates to ‘dreamy dentistry!’
Before TLC, the practice completed 236 onlays. After TLC, 428. An increase of 192 onlays, or 81.4%, in a single year. My own onlay income grew by 40.9%, on one fewer working day per week. One associate more than doubled their onlay production, up 107.4%. The other two saw increases of 47.9% and 10.2% respectively.
Fewer procedures. More income.
Total procedures down 10.8% and revenue up by 28.4%. Everyone working at the top of their scope: the Therapist-led care model.
The Gentle Touch is a fully operational, fully private practice in the Scottish Borders. Eight clinicians. Over 3,000 active patients. These are the results from the first year of a model that is now embedded and running.
If you want to understand how we built it, and what it would take in your own practice, the amber // APLIN therapist-led care programme is where to start.
