What Dentistry Should Learn From the CMA’s Investigation Into Veterinary Practices

19 Aug What Dentistry Should Learn From the CMA’s Investigation Into Veterinary Practices

The Competition and Markets Authority has finished a major investigation into veterinary services, and Dentistry should pay attention, not because vets and dentists are the same, they are clearly not, but there is a striking similarity in the environment in which people make decisions.

A patient, or pet owner, often has limited knowledge, a professional in front of them with considerable expertise, uncertainty about what might happen next and, sometimes, a significant bill. That makes this about much more than price; it is about how people make healthcare decisions.

The CMA’s final veterinary report was published in March 2026. Its reforms include standard price lists, greater ownership transparency and other measures intended to help consumers navigate the market more effectively. This matters even more because the CMA is now looking at us.

Its market study into UK private dentistry launched in March 2026 and is examining how the market works, how well it works for consumers and whether it could work better. A final report is due by March 2027. So perhaps we shouldn’t wait.

The question isn’t simply, ‘did the patient say yes?’

Dentistry has become rather interested in case acceptance. We measure it, train for it, attend courses on it, and celebrate improvements in it. But an 80% treatment acceptance rate tells us almost nothing about the quality of the conversations that produced it:

• Were the options clear?
• Did the patient understand the recommendation?
• Did they understand the fee?
• Was urgency genuine?
• Did they feel able to ask questions?
• Could they comfortably say no?

Those questions should interest us much more because a patient can fully understand their condition, trust their dentist, appreciate the recommendation and still decide ‘not now’. We must be careful not to interpret that as a failed conversation necessarily.

Whilst it may not be great for somebody else’s dashboard of what they think a successful conversation looks like, when we move our thinking beyond old-fashioned measures of success, such as ‘conversion and closing’, we instead see that it may have been an excellent conversation. Perhaps a better way of thinking and to be one step ahead of the CMA is to become a little less obsessed with case acceptance and much more interested in decision quality?

Professional authority changes everything

When a dentist says, “This is what I recommend,” that statement carries weight. Remember, patients are not comparing two televisions; they are relying on somebody with knowledge they don’t possess to help them decide about their health. That authority is legitimate, and patients quite reasonably want our guidance.

But the more authority somebody gives us, the greater our responsibility to use it carefully. Making a clear recommendation isn’t about selling, however ‘ethical’ the technique used, when in fact a good dentist should be able to say:

“Based on what you’ve told me, what I can see clinically, and in my experience, this is what I recommend, and why.” Then we begin to confidently explain the alternatives, limitations, risks, and costs, and the conversation becomes about guidance, which means the problems only occur, the awkwardness only begins, when a recommendation quietly becomes pressure, or pressure from somewhere or somebody else.

Transparency isn’t commercially weak

One response to increased scrutiny will be to see transparency as another regulatory burden, which is a mistake. Imagine being the practice that says:

• Here’s who owns us.
• Here are our typical fees.
• Here’s what might change the cost.
• Here are your options.
• Here’s what we recommend and why.
• Here’s what could happen if you do nothing.
• And unless there’s a genuine clinical reason for urgency, you don’t have to decide today.

That doesn’t sound commercially weak to me, it sounds confident, and confidence builds trust.

Look at the system around the dentist

There’s another lesson here that matters to me. We can tell clinicians that patients come first while simultaneously measuring them on production, treatment acceptance, average treatment value and conversion, and then wonder why conversations sometimes begin to feel commercial.

Good people don’t operate in a vacuum. The environment around them influences their behaviour: what gets measured, what gets praised, what gets challenged and what gets rewarded. So if we care about patient-centred conversations, we should look not only at the dentist having them but at the system we’ve built around that dentist.

The opportunity

The CMA’s private dentistry study is already underway. We don’t yet know what it will conclude, and dentistry should not assume that the veterinary findings or remedies will be repeated, but we don’t need to know the outcome to ask better questions now.

• How easy is it to find our prices?
• When do patients first understand likely cost?
• How clearly do we explain genuine alternatives?
• How do we behave when somebody hesitates?
• Do our targets encourage the behaviour we say we want?
• And perhaps the most important one:
• Are we trying to help patients say yes, or are we helping them make a
• good decision?

Those aren’t always the same thing, and at Rose & Co., I’d much rather dentistry lead this conversation, not because the CMA tells us to, but because trust has always depended on it.

Source note: This article draws on the Competition and MarketsAuthority’s final veterinary services market investigation, published 24 March 2026, and the CMA’s ongoing UK private dental services market study, launched 5 March 2026 and updated in July 2026. The dental study remains open and its conclusions are not yet known.