Choosing a Dentist

Most advice about how to choose a dentist assumes you’re starting from nothing: you’ve moved house, you search “dentist near me”, you pick the one with the nicest website. This page is for a different situation. You’ve already been examined. Someone has given you a printed plan or an emailed PDF listing teeth, procedures and a total. The figure is bigger than you expected, or the list is longer, and now you’re asking whether this is the right dentist at all.

That’s a better place to choose from than a blank search. You now have a document you can check, compare and question. And the AI tools you probably already use (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot) are good at turning dental jargon into plain English, provided you know what to ask them and where they’ll let you down.

Start with the plan, not the practice

Hold off on reading reviews for a minute. The question that matters most is whether the treatment you’ve been offered is reasonable. If it is, the dentist who wrote it is probably a decent choice, and switching costs you time and a fresh set of X-rays. If it isn’t, no number of five-star reviews should keep you there.

A treatment plan can go wrong in roughly three ways:

1. Over-treatment. Crowns where a filling would do, or six fillings when two of the “cavities” are stains worth keeping an eye on.
2. Over-pricing. Treatment that’s fine clinically but priced well above what’s normal for your area.
3. Poor explanation. The work and the price are both fine, but nobody told you why, so you can’t judge either.

The third is the most common, and it’s the one AI helps with most. The first is the hardest to spot without a second clinician, and we’ll come back to it.

Decode the plan before you judge it

UK treatment plans are written in shorthand. Before you can sanity-check anything, you need to know which tooth is which and what each line actually means.

Most UK practices use Palmer notation: the mouth is split into four quarters (upper right, upper left, lower right, lower left) and the teeth in each quarter are numbered 1 to 8, counting back from the front. So “UR6” is the upper right first molar, and “LL8” is a lower left wisdom tooth. Some software uses the international FDI system instead, where each tooth has a two-digit number: the first digit gives the quarter (1 = upper right, 2 = upper left, 3 = lower left, 4 = lower right) and the second gives the tooth. UR6 in Palmer is 16 in FDI.

Remember that “right” means your right, not the dentist’s.

Plans also tend to split items into NHS and private columns, or mark private items with a “P”. In England you can mix the two in one course of treatment, but the dentist has to make clear which parts are private and why. Under NHS rules they should also give you a written plan (an FP17DC) for any Band 2 or Band 3 course.

Using ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini on your plan

The tools are useful for three jobs: translating the plan, generating questions to ask, and giving you a rough price range to compare against. They can’t see your mouth or your X-rays, and they’ll get things wrong. Treat them like a well-read friend who isn’t a dentist.

Strip personal details first

Before pasting anything, delete your name, date of birth, address, NHS number and the practice’s patient ID. You don’t need any of them for the AI to explain the plan. If you’re photographing a paper plan and uploading it, crop or cover the header. In ChatGPT you can also switch off “Improve the model for everyone” under Settings > Data controls, and Claude and Gemini have equivalent settings for training data.

A prompt that works

A vague prompt (“is this treatment plan OK?”) gets you vague reassurance. Give the tool context and ask for structure:

I'm a UK patient with no dental training. Below is a treatment plan
from a private dental practice in Leeds. Please:

1. Explain each line in plain English, including which tooth it is.
2. For each item, say what the usual alternatives are and their
   trade-offs.
3. Give a typical UK private price range for each item, and flag
   anything that looks unusually high or low.
4. List 5 specific questions I should ask the dentist before agreeing.

Don't tell me whether I need the treatment: you can't examine me.

Plan:
UR6 MOD composite  £185
UL6 crown (e-max)  £725
UL6 RCT            £560
LL7 O composite    £120
Hygienist          £75
Total              £1,665

What came back

Here’s a shortened version of what ChatGPT returned for that prompt:

UL6 RCT (£560) + UL6 e-max crown (£725)
Upper left first molar. Root canal treatment removes infected or
inflamed nerve tissue from inside the tooth; a crown is then
commonly recommended on back teeth after RCT because they become
more brittle. £560 for a molar RCT is towards the lower end of
typical UK private fees (roughly £450-£1,200 with a general
dentist). £725 for an all-ceramic crown is within the usual
£500-£1,000 range.

Questions to ask:
- What did the X-ray show on UL6, and can I see it?
- What's the success rate for this RCT, and what happens if it
  fails?
- Is the crown essential, or could an onlay work?
- Is the crown price inclusive of the temporary and lab fees?
- What would this cost on the NHS, and would the material differ?

That’s useful. It confirmed the pricing wasn’t out of line, it explained why a crown follows a root canal (which the patient hadn’t been told) and it gave them five questions that would sound sharp in the surgery. The onlay question in particular is the sort of thing a patient wouldn’t think to ask.

It also hedged sensibly. When the same plan went into Claude, it added that a molar root canal often involves three or four canals and that some dentists refer molars to a specialist endodontist, where fees usually start around £800. Running the plan through two tools and comparing the answers is worth the extra five minutes, because where they disagree is often exactly where you should ask the dentist.

Follow-up prompts worth using

• “Which items on this plan are urgent and which could reasonably wait six months?” (Then check the answer with the dentist, because urgency depends on what’s on the X-ray.)
• “Rewrite these five questions so they sound polite rather than suspicious.”
• “If I had this done on the NHS in England, which band would each item fall under?”
• “What would a dentist typically look for on an X-ray before recommending a root canal on a molar?”

Sanity-checking the price

NHS charges

On the NHS in England you don’t pay per item. You pay one charge per course of treatment, based on the most complex thing in it. The charges from April 2025 are below; check nhs.uk for the current year, as they usually rise each April.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland use different charging systems, so if you’re there, check your nation’s NHS site.

This makes the NHS sanity check simple. If you’ve been offered three fillings and a root canal on the NHS, the whole course should cost £75.30. If someone has quoted you £75.30 per filling, that’s wrong. If your plan has a crown in it, the total is £326.70 however many crowns there are.

The catch is what counts as “clinically necessary”. The NHS covers what you need to keep your mouth healthy, not what looks best. White fillings on back teeth, for example, are often offered privately because the NHS option for molars is usually amalgam. That’s legitimate. It’s less legitimate if you’re told something clinically necessary “isn’t available on the NHS” at a practice that holds an NHS contract. Ask the dentist to put that in writing.

Private prices

Private fees vary a lot by region. Central London practices commonly charge 30 to 50 per cent more than the same treatment in the North East. These ranges are typical for general dental practices outside London in 2025-26:

A worked example: a patient in Bristol is quoted £1,450 for a molar root canal and £1,100 for the crown, so £2,550 in total for one tooth. Both items sit at or above the top of the range. That doesn’t mean they’re being ripped off. The practice might use a microscope for root canals, or the dentist might have postgraduate endodontic training. But it’s enough to justify two calls: one to the practice asking what’s included, and one to a specialist endodontist nearby asking for their fee for a molar. If the specialist charges £1,100 for the root canal, you now know the general practice is charging specialist rates without being on the specialist list.

The other comparison worth doing is NHS against private for the same tooth. That same root canal and crown would fall under Band 3 on the NHS at £326.70. The private version may use a different crown material, have shorter waiting times or a longer appointment. Ask the dentist exactly what you’d get for the extra £2,200, and whether NHS availability at that practice is realistic.

Hidden costs to ask about

Plans don’t always list everything. Before you agree, ask whether the quote includes:

• Temporary crowns and the lab fee for the permanent one
• Review appointments after root canal or implant work
• Any X-rays or CT scans still to come (a CBCT scan for implant planning commonly costs £150-£300)
• Replacement or adjustment if a crown doesn’t fit
• The guarantee period, if there is one (many practices offer one to five years on crowns, often conditional on regular check-ups)

Checking the dentist, not just the plan

Once the plan makes sense, look at the person who wrote it. This takes about ten minutes.

The GDC register. Every dentist, hygienist and dental therapist working in the UK has to be on the General Dental Council register. Search gdc-uk.org under “Check a register”. You’ll see their registration number, the year they qualified and any conditions or warnings on their practice. A dentist with a current suspension or conditions shouldn’t be treating you in a way that breaches them.

The specialist lists. The GDC also keeps specialist lists for orthodontics, endodontics, periodontics, prosthodontics, oral surgery and others. Only dentists on these lists can call themselves a “specialist”. Words like “implant dentist”, “cosmetic dentist” or “smile specialist” have no protected meaning. A dentist can do implant work very well without being on a specialist list, but if someone calls themselves a specialist and isn’t listed, that’s a problem.

The inspection report. In England, dental practices are inspected by the Care Quality Commission. Search the practice on cqc.org.uk. Dental reports don’t carry an overall rating the way GP surgeries do, but they do say whether the practice met standards for safety, effectiveness, care, responsiveness and leadership. Wales uses Healthcare Inspectorate Wales, Scotland uses Healthcare Improvement Scotland and Northern Ireland uses RQIA.

Reviews. Google reviews are useful for logistics (whether they run late, whether reception is helpful) and nearly useless for clinical quality, because most patients can’t judge a root canal. Read the one- and two-star reviews specifically. A pattern of “pushed expensive treatment” or “I was told I needed X and another dentist said I didn’t” carries weight. A single angry review about parking doesn’t.

How the dentist behaves when you ask questions tells you more than any register entry. We’ve put together a fuller checklist on our page on the signs of a good dentist, covering how they explain options, whether they show you X-rays without being asked, and how they react when you say you want to think about it.

Questions to ask before you sign anything

Take these to your next appointment, or send them by email so you get the answers in writing. You can ask an AI tool to tailor them to your plan, but these work as a starting set:

1. Can you show me the X-ray or photo that led to each item?
2. What happens if I don’t have this treatment, and over what timescale?
3. What are the alternatives, including doing nothing or monitoring it?
4. Which items are NHS and which are private, and why is each private item private?
5. Is the price fixed, or could it change once you start?
6. What’s your experience with this procedure? Roughly how many have you done?
7. If this fails, what’s the next step and what would that cost?

A good dentist will answer all of them without getting defensive. Question 2 is the most revealing. “That tooth has decay into the dentine and will probably need a root canal within a year if we leave it” is a proper answer. “You really should get it done” is not.

When to get a second opinion, and how

Get one if the plan is over about £1,500, if it includes extractions you weren’t expecting, if you’ve been told you need several crowns at once, or if your previous dentist never mentioned problems and a new one has found lots of them. Practices changing hands sometimes produces that last pattern, and it’s worth checking.

To get one:

• Ask for your records. Under UK GDPR you’re entitled to a copy of your dental records, including X-rays, usually free and within one month. Ask for X-rays in digital format, which saves the second dentist from repeating them.
• Book a private consultation. Expect to pay £50-£120 at another general practice, or £100-£250 with a specialist. Some specialists accept self-referrals; others want a letter from a dentist.
• Don’t lead the witness. Hand over the X-rays and ask what they’d recommend before showing them the first plan. If you show the plan first, you’ll mostly get agreement.

Two dentists rarely produce identical plans, and that’s normal. A filling one dentist would do now, another might monitor for a year. What should worry you is a big gap: one says two fillings, the other says four crowns.

Where AI tools get dental advice wrong

Use the tools, but know their weak spots:

• They can’t diagnose. Without your X-rays and an exam, any comment on whether you “need” a treatment is a guess. The good tools say so; push back if one doesn’t.
• Prices drift. AI price ranges come from training data that might be a year or two old, and they’re often London-skewed or US-skewed. If you get a figure in dollars or one that sounds American (a $1,500 crown), ask again and specify the UK and your region.
• They over-reassure. Ask “is £725 reasonable for a crown?” and most tools will say yes. Ask “what would make £725 for a crown too much?” and you’ll get a more useful answer.
• They get NHS rules slightly wrong. Band contents, the rules on mixing NHS and private care and the differences between England, Wales and Scotland are easy for a model to muddle. Check anything NHS-related against nhs.uk.
• They miss context. If you have diabetes, take bisphosphonates or blood thinners, or are pregnant, that changes what’s sensible. Mention it in the prompt, and make sure your dentist knows too.

Moving to a different dentist

If you decide to leave, a few practical points will save you trouble.

In England there’s no formal NHS “registration” with a dentist the way there is with a GP. You’re the practice’s patient for a course of treatment, and many practices keep regular patients on their books by custom. In practice that means an NHS practice that took you on last year isn’t obliged to see you this year, and the flip side is that you’re free to go anywhere. The “Find a dentist” tool on nhs.uk shows which practices say they’re taking new NHS patients, though that information is often out of date. Ring them to check.

If you’re halfway through an NHS course of treatment, it’s usually cleaner to finish it or to formally end it with the current practice before starting elsewhere, so you don’t pay two band charges. With private work, ask what you’ve paid for and what’s been delivered; deposits for crowns or implants are sometimes partly non-refundable once lab work has started.

If something has gone wrong rather than just feeling wrong, complain to the practice first. For NHS treatment in England, if that doesn’t resolve it you can go to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. For private treatment, the Dental Complaints Service (run independently but funded by the GDC) handles complaints about cost and service, and can ask the practice to offer a refund or remedial work. Serious concerns about a dentist’s fitness to practise go to the GDC.

The quickest useful thing you can do right now is to type out your plan with the personal details removed, paste it into ChatGPT or Claude with the prompt above, and email your dentist the three questions from the answer that you couldn’t have asked yesterday. How quickly and clearly they reply will tell you a lot about whether to stay.