HealthCentre.Ai A Kwick Blocks product

Blogs · July 2026

What does it cost? Price transparency rules for UK practices in 2026

The first question almost every caller asks, the one your regulator expects you to answer, and the one nobody has measured. What the GDC, the CMA, the RCVS and CQC actually require.

The short answer: UK dental practices are required by the General Dental Council to give patients clear information about costs, and patients are entitled to know what treatment will cost before it starts. Veterinary practices are not currently required to publish prices, but the Competition and Markets Authority found fewer than 40% do and only 29% of clients received written pricing, and it is consulting on changing that until 23 September 2026. Care home fees are not price-regulated, but the self-funder gap is large and public. Private general practice has no price rule at all, only a patient who leaves. Below is what each regulator actually requires, and an honest note on what nobody has measured.

Why are we publishing this?

Hey guys. Quick one.

Ask anyone who answers the phone at a practice what the first question is, and you get the same answer. How much is it.

Then look at what anyone has actually measured about whether practices answer it. For vets, the CMA has measured it, and the answer is uncomfortable. For dentistry, the honest answer is that nobody knows. Not because it is hard, but because nobody has done the work.

So we have a situation where the duty is clear, a regulator is actively consulting on it right now, and the compliance question is essentially unmeasured. That is what this is about.

One thing our team wants to flag up front, because it says something about this whole subject. While we were putting this together, we had a quote lined up from the GDC that would have been the best line in it. We could not verify it. The page it was supposed to be on returns a shell, and the standards PDF returns a server error. So it is not here. We would rather hand you a thinner piece you can defend than a better-sounding one you cannot.

Chanel, and the team at HealthCentre

Where has price transparency actually been measured?

In one place only: veterinary practices. The Competition and Markets Authority has done what nobody has done for the other three. It looked.

  • Fewer than 40% of veterinary practices publish their prices.
  • Only 29% of clients received written pricing.

Those are the CMA's own findings, not a number the CMA is quoting from someone else. That distinction runs through this whole piece.

Do vets have to publish their prices?

Not currently, and most do not. But it is being decided this quarter.

WhatWhen
CMA price transparency update published18 November 2025
Consultation on remedies openedJuly 2026
Consultation closes23 September 2026
Proposed remedy: written estimate for treatment over £500Proposed, not in force

And how owners actually choose: 51% considered only one practice and 55% cited availability (CMA demand-side working paper, 2025). Read those next to the price findings. Most owners are not shopping around. They ring one practice. If it does not answer, or cannot say what it costs, that is the whole decision.

And the pressure on the people answering is real. The RCVS Survey of the Veterinary Profession 2024 found 49% reporting stress, 54% citing client expectations and 46% citing affordability discussions. To be careful with that: the survey does not say the price conversation causes the stress, and we are not claiming it does. It says it sits among the things the profession names.

One duty no other vertical here carries. The RCVS Code obliges practices to provide or arrange 24-hour emergency first aid and pain relief. That is not a service-level choice. It means the phone at a vet practice is a regulatory surface in a way a dental phone is not.

What does the GDC require dental practices to say about cost?

Clear information, before treatment starts. The standard is not ambiguous:

"2.4 You must give patients clear information about costs"

And among what a patient is entitled to:

"To know how much their treatment will cost before it starts, and to be told about any changes"

Both are on the GDC's live standards site today. We checked.

Now the awkward part. Nobody has published a measurement of whether UK dental practices actually do this. Not the GDC. Not a trade body. The last serious UK look we could find was the Office of Fair Trading, in 2012. Fourteen years.

And here is the practical consequence. If nobody has measured it, nobody is measuring you either. Which means the only record of what your practice tells patients about cost is whatever your front desk happened to say, to whoever rang, on the day. That is not a compliance position anyone would choose. The fix is not complicated: answer the price question the same way every time, from your own fee list, and keep the record of having done it.

Are NHS dental bands still used across the UK?

No. Wales abolished the band system on 1 April 2026.

This will catch a lot of copy this year. Any patient-facing material that describes NHS dental charges as "Band 1, Band 2, Band 3" as though it applies UK-wide is now wrong in at least one nation. Check what your own material says.

How much does a care home cost per week in the UK?

  • The average self-funder pays about £1,594 a week. The average local-authority-funded resident, about £1,225. (LaingBuisson, 35th edition, 2025)
  • A separate market view puts the average at about £1,298 a week. (carehome.co.uk, September 2025)

And the asset is perishable. 10.6% of beds were vacant and admittable in the week ending 14 November 2025 (DHSC capacity tracker). An empty bed earns nothing and cannot be sold later.

So an enquiry from a self-funder is worth a great deal, arrives at an unpredictable hour, and opens with a question about money that the registered manager is often the only one able to answer. Which puts the enquiry that decides an admission on the one person who cannot be in two places at once. Meanwhile the workforce is churning: 29.7% turnover in 2024-25 (Skills for Care).

And the regulator here is different in kind. For care homes the killer is not a price rule. It is the CQC evidence trail: being able to show what was said, to whom, and when.

Why is price so decisive for a private GP practice?

Because the price is the product. Someone is choosing to pay for something they could get free.

Which produces a specific and brutal economics: in the NHS a patient waits. In private general practice, they leave. There is no queue to hold them. If they cannot get through, or cannot find out what it costs, they ring the next practice, and a fee for a missed appointment does not refill the slot.

We do not have a UK figure for that, and we are not going to invent one. No published source we could verify measures private-clinic no-shows or unanswered enquiries in the UK. The figures circulating on this subject are US answering-service marketing and we will not repeat them.

What do the four have in common, and what do they not?

They share one thing: the first question is what does it cost, and it usually arrives by phone, to a person who is doing something else.

They do not share anything else, and copy that pretends otherwise is wrong:

The woundThe regulatorWho answers
DentalThe recall list and the no-showGDCReception, chairside
VeterinaryReachability, plus a 24-hour emergency duty no one else hasRCVS, plus a live CMA studyThe team, mid-consult
Care homesAn empty bed, and a CQC evidence trailCQCThe registered manager, who runs the home
Private GPA self-pay walkaway, with no queue to hold themCQCThe front desk

A dental recall list, a 24-hour emergency duty, an empty bed and a self-pay walkaway are four different businesses. The price question is the thing they genuinely share, which is exactly why it is worth writing about.

What can honestly be handed off?

One agent, four ways in, all reading from the same knowledge base.

ChannelWhat it handles
VoicePicks up, answers the question, books it
ChatThe visitor on your site deciding now
EmailThe enquiry that would sit until morning
SocialThe message that is now how people ask
Knowledge baseYour fees, availability, policies and process, feeding all four so they say the same thing

On price specifically: it answers the cost question from your own published fees, consistently, every time, without anyone having to stop what they are doing. It says what is in your knowledge base. It does not estimate, improvise, or quote a range it has inferred.

What will you not let it do?

  • It does not give clinical advice. Not a soft rule. It stops and hands to a person.
  • It does not quote a price that is not in your knowledge base. No inference, no "usually around". If the fee is not there, it says a person will confirm.
  • It does not triage an emergency. For a vet practice this matters more than anywhere: the RCVS 24-hour duty is yours, and an agent routes to your arrangement, it does not substitute for it.
  • It does not decide whether someone is vulnerable. It flags and hands over.
  • Everything is on the record. For a care home under CQC, that is arguably the point.

Where is an agent the wrong answer?

  • If your fees genuinely cannot be written down, do not start. An agent reading a stale fee list will confidently quote a price you no longer charge, and in dentistry that is a complaint with a regulatory duty attached.
  • If your diary has no capacity, more answered enquiries is not a win.
  • If the caller needs clinical judgement now, they need a clinician, not a queue.
  • If you have a receptionist who knows your patients by name, that is worth more than any automation. Protect it.

What we cut, and why

This list is here because on this subject the bad numbers are more available than the good ones. It is unusual to publish one, and deliberate.

  • A GDC quote that would have been the best line we had. The page returns a rendered shell that does not contain it, and the standards PDF returns a server error. Not used until someone opens the document and sees it.
  • The dental price figures (£55, £80, 23%, 14%). They sit on a CMA page, but the CMA's own wording is that "independent sources suggest" them. The CMA is repeating, not producing, and will publish its own in 2027. A figure on a regulator's page is not automatically the regulator's figure.
  • A named attribution for those figures. It was offered to us. The name does not appear on the page. Not printed.
  • A phone-survey dataset of dental practices (404 practices, quotes ranging £49 to £182). It is the best-fitting evidence in this whole subject and we could not verify it on a live page in time. If we can stand it up, it goes in the next edition.
  • "32% of dental calls are missed." Vendor-laundered. No credible UK dental call answer rate exists.
  • A front-desk price-call demonstration widely quoted in dentistry. It is from January 2014.
  • A lifetime-value figure for a care home enquiry. Derivable, but it depends on an average length of stay from 2011. A 2025 fee times a 2011 duration is a number that looks precise and is not.
  • Any US answering-service statistic on missed calls or no-shows. Not UK, not comparable, widely recycled.
  • "Band 1/2/3" framing. Wrong in Wales since 1 April 2026.

And one thing we are not claiming: that nobody publishes dental fees. We are claiming that nobody has measured it, which is a different and defensible statement.

Frequently asked questions

Do dentists have to give you a price before treatment?

Yes. GDC standard 2.4 requires clear information about costs, and patients are entitled to know what treatment will cost before it starts and to be told about any changes.

Do vets have to publish prices in the UK?

Not currently. The CMA found fewer than 40% do, and only 29% of clients got written pricing. A consultation on changing this closes 23 September 2026.

What is the £500 vet estimate rule?

A remedy proposed by the CMA requiring a written estimate for treatment over £500. It is proposed, not in force.

Are NHS dental bands still in use?

Not in Wales, which abolished them on 1 April 2026. Any UK-wide "Band 1/2/3" description is now inaccurate.

How much does a care home cost a week?

About £1,594 for the average self-funder and about £1,225 for local-authority funding (LaingBuisson, 2025). A separate view puts the average at about £1,298 (carehome.co.uk, September 2025).

What share of dental practices publish their fees?

Nobody has counted. There is no published UK measurement. The last serious UK look we could find was the Office of Fair Trading in 2012.

Sources

All links opened and checked on 17 July 2026.

Tell us how you actually run

We load your knowledge base with your real fees, availability and policies, and every hand-off point stays yours. dental, pets, care, doctor.