Release Highlights
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NHS 2026 changes to be live from April 1, 2026, include the following:
- New FP17PR form and updates to patient profile and patient portal workflows for tracing NHS numbers and tracking NHS-funded treatments.
- Denture Repairs will now be eligible for 2 UDAs with zero patient charge.
- Denture Additions/Reline/Rebase will expire on April 1st and be replaced by two new treatments: Denture Additions & Denture Reline/Rebase.
- Fissure Sealants and Pre-formed Crowns now included in the count of Band 2 treatments for sub-band (2A/2B) calculation and attract Band 2 patient charges.
- New Nurse Applied Fluoride Varnish treatments can now be provided by qualified Dental Nurses for patients under 16 to make better use of skill-mix. The NHS will grant 0.5 UDA for this treatment with zero patient charge.
- New Unscheduled Care (UC) treatments are now available as a plan type within an NHS Treatment Plan. This will attract Band 1 Patient Payable and £60.00 worth of UDA based on the contract.
- Urgent Treatment expires on April 1st. Any linked procedure codes will terminate and will not be available for selection in a Treatment Plan.
- Treatments outside Banded Treatments (Unscheduled Care, Denture Repairs, Nurse-Applied Fluoride Varnish) can be mapped as Unbanded.
- New patient charges for Banded Treatments from April 1st, 2026 onwards.
- Easily track how early or late a patient arrives for their appointment using the new Early/Late indicators on the Appointment tile, Dashboard, and Patient Tracker.
- You can now tag Clinicians to Receipts to ensure accurate income allocation and collection based reporting.
- Introducing Internal Referrals to refer a patient to an in-house clinician, helping track revenue from the referral with ease.
Discover all the latest improvements and new features included in the 10.36 release!
1. Updates to Patient Profile and Patient Portal Workflow
To align with the proposed NHS guidelines starting April 1, 2026, the following updates have been made to the patient profile and patient portal workflows for tracing NHS numbers and tracking NHS-funded treatments.
- Legal Name: Patients must enter their legal forename and surname (no nicknames). Only letters, spaces, hyphens, and apostrophes can be entered.
- Legal Sex: The system now requires legal sex to be recorded as either male or female, in line with the Gender Recognition Act.
- Ethnicity: The list of ethnic group categories has been updated. Submitting ‘Patient Declined’ for ethnicity is no longer permitted; a valid category must be captured.
- NHS Number: The NHS number is now mandatory if the patient confirms that they have an NHS number on the FP17PR form in the Patient Portal.
- NHS Status: This new field allows patients to select the appropriate status (e.g., non-UK resident, not known), which maps to the required values.
Patient Profile Patient Portal
- Patients must verify and complete all mandatory details before submitting the new FP17PR form to ensure accurate data capture and reduce claim rejections.
- The FP17PR form can be downloaded from the NHS slide-out by the practice. The file size has been reduced for faster download and easier storage.
2. Updates to NHS Treatments
a. The new NHS TX Categories section under Practice Settings → Treatments acts as a reference for mapping Bands against NHS Treatments and setting expiry dates for NHS treatments being retired.
b. Inline warnings appear for expired codes and incorrect bands to ensure correct mapping of procedure codes to NHS Treatment Categories.
Existing Denture Modification Treatment Being Retired
a. Denture Additions/Reline/Rebase is being retired from April 1st. The Expiry Date will be automatically set to April 1st, and any associated procedure codes will automatically move from active to terminated.
- Linked procedure codes will no longer be available for selection within the treatment list on the chart.
- Procedure codes already added to the treatment plan will not be affected.
- You can change the expiry date from the new NHS TX Categories section to make linked procedure codes active again for selection as treatments on the chart.
New Denture Modification Treatments Being Introduced
a. Denture Relines/Rebase and Denture Additions have been added as two new NHS Treatments, now eligible for 3 UDAs and Band 2 patient charge.
b. Denture Addition, Reline or Rebasing treatments on Band 2 course of treatment will now earn relevant band 2 UDAs plus 2 UDAs (5, 7 or 9 UDAs) with Band 2 patient charge.
c. Denture Addition, Reline or Rebasing on a Band 3 course of treatment will only earn Band 3 UDAs (12) with Band 3 patient charge.
New Nurse Applied Fluoride Varnish Treatment
- Nurse Applied Fluoride Varnish Treatments can now be provided by qualified Dental Nurses acting as Direct Access Dental Care Professionals (DCP) for better use of skill-mix within the dental practice.
- Direct Access DCP type on the claim form will now include ‘Dental Nurse’ as an option to choose. They will also need a Personal ID number and be added to the list of clinicians on the contract in Compass.
- The only treatment provided is Fluoride Varnish for patients under 16. Claims will be rejected if it contains any other treatment. 0.50 UDA will be awarded with zero patient payable.
Note: The Treatment Plan will display 0 UDAs but will accurately display the correct UDAs during claim submission.
New Unscheduled Care Treatment Replaces Existing Urgent Care
- Urgent Treatment will expire on April 1st, 2026, and will be replaced by Unscheduled Care as a new NHS treatment for emergency appointments.
- All procedure codes linked to Urgent Treatment will not be available for use in the Treatment List within the Chart. Treatment Plans created after April 1st that continue to use procedure codes linked to Urgent Treatment will be rejected.
- From April 1st, NHS emergency treatments should be created as Unscheduled Care, now available as an NHS Treatment Plan Type.
- 8.2% of contract value is to be delivered as Unscheduled Care Treatments. This equates to 11 CoT per £10000 annual contract value.
- Unscheduled Care claims will be awarded UDAs equivalent to £60, based on the notional UDA value for the contract. A Band 1 patient charge will apply. A £15 fixed fee per Unscheduled Care appointment will be provided along with the monthly pay schedule.
Changes to Existing Banded Treatments
- Fissure Sealant has moved from Band 1 to Band 2. To avoid affecting existing treatment plans, it is recommended to create a new procedure code for use from April 1st. Updating the band on an existing treatment may recalculate fees for older treatments if they have not yet been charged.
- From April 1, Fissure Sealants and Pre-formed Crowns are now included in the count of Band 2 treatments for sub-band (2A/2B) calculations.
Changes to Existing Denture Repair Treatment
- Effective April 1st, Denture Repairs need to be mapped as Unbanded. After mapping, Denture Repair treatments will earn 2 UDAs with zero patient charge.
Note: The Treatment Plan will display 0 UDAs but will accurately display the correct UDAs during claim submission.
Changes to Patient Payable for Banded Treatments
| Band | Old Charge | New Charge | Uplift |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 27.40 | £27.90 | 1.82% |
| 2 | 75.30 | £76.60 | 1.72% |
| 3 | 326.70 | £332.10 | 1.65% |
| Urgent | 27.40 | £27.90 | 1.82% |
| Regulation 11 | 98.01 | £99.60 | 1.62% |
Note: Treatment Plans created after April 1, 2026 will have the new Patient Payable. For all patients requiring a new CoT to be opened before April 1, 2026, clinicians are expected to create new Treatment Plans during the March 27th - March 31st window. This ensures the old patient payable is correctly reflected in these plans to prevent claim rejections.
3. Updates to Treatment Charting
a. A new gear icon appears next to the Payor icon on a Treatment Plan, allowing clinicians to mark it with an appropriate NHS Treatment Type.
You can choose to Mark as Continuation, Mark as NHS Referral and Mark as Unscheduled Care.
b. Marking a plan as Unscheduled Care updates the plan fee to the official Band 1 fee and replaces the UDA display with an NHS Payment of £60. The equivalent UDAs based on the notional contract UDA value will be calculated during claim submission.
Once a plan is marked as Unscheduled Care, the Submit Claim button is enabled automatically.
- All treatment codes added to an Unscheduled Care treatment plan will not have any associated fees. Any existing uncharged treatment codes added before the plan was marked as Unscheduled Care will also be recalculated to zero.
- The Unscheduled Care NHS Treatment Type can be removed by clicking the ✕ icon.
4. What Should Users Do?
- Do not open Unscheduled Care treatment plans before April 1st, 2026.
- Do not add newly introduced Treatments to Treatment Plans created before April 1st, 2026.
- Do not add old treatments to new Treatment Plans created after April 1st, 2026.
- Map Denture Repair to Unbanded. Users will receive 1 UDA if the treatment is added before April 1st, and 2 UDAs if it is added after April 1st.
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A new procedure code should be set up for Fissure Sealant and mapped to Band 2. This code should be utilised starting from April 1, 2026.
- Alternative Option: Update the Fissure Sealant mapping to Band 2. Before implementing this change, you must verify that the current Fissure Sealant treatment is not part of any active NHS Treatment Plans. Failure to ensure this can result in inconsistent fees for those plans.
- Change or clear the expiry date for expired NHS Treatments to make linked procedure codes active again for selection as treatments on the chart.
- Treatment Plans created after April 1, 2026 will use the new Patient Payable. For patients needing a new CoT before April 1, clinicians should create treatment plans between March 27 and 31 to ensure the old Patient Payable is applied and avoid claim rejections.
a. Practices can now track how early or late a patient was for their appointment using the ‘Early’ and ‘Late’ indicators.
- The Late Indicator is displayed when the scheduled appointment start time has passed and the appointment has not moved into an In-Practice status.
- The timer shown alongside the indicator highlights how long the patient is late and automatically stops once the appointment is moved to an In-Practice status.
- The Early Indicator is displayed when an appointment is moved into an In-Practice status before the scheduled start time.
Note: You can configure In-Practice appointment statuses via Practice Settings → Diary → General Settings.
b. The Early and Late indicators can be added to the appointment tile by customising it in Practice Settings → Diary → Diary Settings.
c. To ensure clear visibility for staff, these indicators are shown on the Front Office Dashboard and the Patient Tracker Expanded and Compressed views.
Easily move treatments between appointments in a Treatment Plan Template using drag and drop, so you no longer need to delete and re-add them. You can access this via System Menu → Practice Settings → Clinical → Quick Plans.
You can now tag clinicians to receipts for all Payments, Payment Plans, and Text-to-Pay requests. This ensures accurate income allocation and enables detailed, collection based revenue reporting.
a. Clinician Tagging can be enabled from Practice Settings → Payments & Billing → General → Others in the new ‘Clinician Tagging to Receipts’ section.
Note: This feature will not be enabled by default.
b. Tag a Clinician when making payments via Add New Payment or Text to Pay.
c. Tag a Clinician to an existing receipt by editing the Receipt Details.
d. If the clinician tagged on the receipt differs from the clinician tagged to the selected codes, a warning prompts users to either apply the payment across the clinicians’ codes or update all selected receipts to a specific clinician.
This feature can be enabled by setting the Enable warning while making a clinician transfer of receipt for advanced payments setting to Yes.
e. A new Clinician column has been added in the Payments and the Unapplied Credit Receipts grids, allowing you to view and filter receipts by clinician.
f. The new Clinician Tagging to Receipts feature will result in updates to collection-based reports.
- A Receipt Clinician filter and column have been added to the Income Allocation, Payment Log and Deposit Reports.
- The Income Allocation View of the Income Allocation Report has been enhanced with two new columns: 'Payments' and 'Allocated Payments.' These display the total payments and allocated payments, respectively, that are associated with the clinician.
The Advance Payments and Allocated Advance Payments Views of the Income Allocation Report have now been amended to the Payments and Allocated Payments Views.
These views allow you to group by and drill down into all payments tagged against a clinician.
a. You can now refer patients internally using the new ‘Internal Referral’ option in the Refer-Out slide-out.
Send internal referrals instantly using Quick Send Referral, with no extra steps.
b. Once a referral is sent to an in-house clinician, they can view the entry on the Referral Hub, accept it and book an appointment for it.
c. Once the referral has been accepted, the referring clinician can view it on the Accepted tab in the Referral Tracker.
d. The Referral Tracker and Referral Hub now include a ‘Referral Type’ column to distinguish between Internal and External Referrals.
e. You can also generate the ‘Refer Out (Internal Referrals)’ report in Operational Reports to view Internal Patient Referrals with Accepted, Proposed, and Presented Production values.
Check out the latest updates in 10.36 and share your feedback. We can't wait to hear what you think!