Dental Tender Writing

• General Dental Services

General Dental Services (GDS) contracts are the primary framework for NHS-funded dental care being delivered in England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, and are a crucial tendering process for those looking to secure NHS contracts. With a competitive bidding process and the need to demonstrate a high-quality and a fully compliant service, while delivering cost-effective dental care, the need for well-written and knowledge led dental bid writing is essential.

• Personal Dental Services

As an alternative to GDS contracts, within England, the NHS now offers Personal Dental Services (PDS), which offer greater flexibility in the delivery of NHS dental services, allowing local commissioners to tailor services based more on the specific oral health needs of communities. These dental tenders are often used to support specialist services, such as paediatric dentistry, community-based care, domiciliary care, or urgent dental treatment.

• Trust-based contracts

Less competitive than PDSs, Trust-Based Contacts are another form of dental tendering in the UK. The terms for these dental tenders are more often negotiated rather than strictly fixed, allowing for adaptive service models, with contracts being informally extended based on performance and patient outcomes. Based on this, dental tender writing for trust-based contracts requires a demonstration of capability that showcases past NHS projects with in-depth case studies and testimonials, while aligning with the contract specifications. 

• Orthodontics

In 2019, the UK orthodontic market was valued at around £118.7 million, with potential growth reaching £295.5 million by 2027. This demonstrates the substantial market size within the UK healthcare sector and the high demand of the UK population, especially children and young adults, who will require orthodontic treatment. Focusing on diagnosing, prevention and other dental or jaw alignment issues, the treatment is primarily delivered through the NHS or private orthodontic providers.

• Specific requirements – Dental procurement documentation can be extensive and detailed, with a large emphasis on specifications, legislative compliance and proven capability through qualifications and demonstrated experience. Understanding the full scope and developing well-written and detailed, data driven responses to quality questions will be key to engaging with the customer and getting seen amongst the crowd for dental tenders.
• Detailed pricing – In today’s current climate with financial constraints being a large factor within the dental industry, the need to produce detailed pricing to demonstrate transparency and value for money is vital. As a supplier, you must show that you can delivery the highest quality of service while also ensuring value for money to public funds. Taking time to put together a well-structured cost proposal that shows how your service will be delivered within budget while providing investment with prevention-focused care and the efficiency of a well-run organisation will help secure contracts by ensuring long term service viability.
• A bespoke bid – Each dental tender opportunity is unique, with its own requirements and specifications covering the specific client and social needs of the dental service. Gaining a full and in-depth understanding of the tender specifications, as well as understanding the clients background and specific social demands of the area, are vital in producing bespoke dental bids. Understanding this knowledge before completing your dental tender submission will allow you to clearly explain how you will meet the specific objectives within, offering solutions to the client’s problems with clear and concise project plans and management.