NHS Dental: Transforming Dental Services

UX design for the NHS Business Services Authority, delivered with Accenture.

Overview

Redesigning a critical servicewithin a much larger NHS programme

  • Context

    Accenture was rebuilding the legacy NHS dental portal: around 15 interconnected services, including those for dental earnings and pensions.

  • My responsibility

    Owned the UX design for the Annual Earnings Review and related pension work, from Beta through testing, delivery and handover. Worked closely with engineers, stakeholders, product managers, designers and user researchers.

  • What I delivered

    End-to-end journeys for dental practice managers and dentists, five interactive prototypes coded in HTML and CSS, tested interaction and status patterns, accessible components, developer documentation and build-ready handover.

3
New design system components contributed to the NHS community on Figma
5
Interactive prototypes, coded in HTML and CSS
96%
Task completion in final usability testing

Context

Each year, practice managers and dentists agree the earnings used for pensionsThe agreed figure affects the dentist’s pension, so both accuracy and confidence matter.

  1. Step 1

    Calculate

    An initial earnings figure is calculated

  2. Step 2

    Review

    The practice manager reviews it for each dentist

  3. Step 3

    Respond

    The dentist confirms it or suggests a change

  4. Step 4

    Resolve

    The practice manager resolves the review before the annual deadline

For a dentist, this might be one short annual task. For a practice manager, it can mean coordinating the process across many dentists and contracts.

The Users

The same review creates two very different jobs

  • Practice manager

    Returns to the service repeatedly

    “Where do I need to act?”

    • Works across many dentists and contracts
    • Calculates, coordinates and follows progress
    • Needs to identify exceptions and next actions

  • Dentist

    Uses the service once a year

    “Is this figure correct?”

    • Reviews one or a few figures
    • Needs to understand and trust the amount
    • Should not have to learn a management system

The Problem

The legacy portal treated those jobsas if they were identical

The interface displayed the financial data, but it did not support the coordination and decision-making happening around it. It gave a high-volume manager and an occasional reviewer essentially the same experience.

Pain points

  • Both roles received the same spreadsheet-like interface.
  • Practice managers lacked a clear overview of progress and responsibility.
  • Dentists “confirmed” an amount by typing the same number back into the system.

Contract View Page

One practice had to reconcile several dentists’ earnings,coordinate their responses and keep the combined figures within one contract limit.

First we added the key requirements

  1. Compare and revise each dentist’s figure
  2. Track who had responded and what had changed
  3. Keep the combined total within the contract limit

What testing fixed

Testing fixed the obvious interaction problemsbut the workflow was still unclear

Before

Participants missed the small “Edit” link

After testing

Edit → Change figures

The action became a clear button, placed where people look after checking the totals.

The reframe

Two statuses described the systembut not who needed to act next

We kept rearranging the same statuses.

We tried combination after combination to make progress clear, but nothing felt simple or right.

It only clicked when we zoomed out and reframed the problem itself.

The solution was right in front of us once we reframed the challenge

How might we make this feel like a clear exchange

between a practice and a dentist?

Contract View Page

One status showed progressand a note carried the conversation

Interactive prototype
Dental Services Portal

One status showed the next action; a note carried the conversation

Each row keeps one provider status, and what the dentist did sits as a note under their name. Try it: change a figure and send it.

Contract Landing Page

Practices needed a work queue,not just a contract list

One contract at a time, with no view of the workload.

The legacy portal only let practice managers search by contract ID or dentist name. They could not see:

  • How much work remained
  • Which contracts needed attention
  • What was holding each contract up

Dentist experience

Simplifying the dentist’s decisionWe tested three ways to support the same once-a-year task.

This is the dentist’s side of the exchange. Once the practice manager sends the figures, each dentist checks theirs and confirms them or suggests a change.

  1. Editable table

    Review and edit everything in one view.

    Tested

  2. Grouped by status

    Organise contracts by workflow stage.

    Tested

  3. Focused questions

    Make one decision at a time.

    Taken forward

The Dentist View

The focused direction reduced the taskto three clear steps.

A dentist finds their contract, answers one question per earnings period, then checks their answers before sending them.

Design System Contribution

Adapted the error patternfor dense financial tables

The message explained the rule, but not where to fix it

Users needed to know what was wrong, where it was wrong and how to fix it. Nothing pointed to the field with the problem, and the NHS design system had no guidance for errors inside tables.

A project filter became reusable guidanceacross NHSBSA services

Filter and sort tray

I worked with two designers to define how the component should scale, behave and remain accessible across services.

One component with checkbox, radio, range, date and sort sections, plus guidance on scale, behaviour and no-JavaScript fallbacks.

Outcome

The service became clearer,but confidence still depended on the data

What changed?

96%

Task completion in final usability testing

We presented the prototypes at the NHSBSA Dental Conference, where dentists, NHS staff, and practice managers responded positively telling us the new platform would make the process far easier to complete.

What remained?

They could finish the task, but not see the working.

Dentists couldn’t see how practice managers had worked out their earnings, and practice managers didn’t trust the system’s default estimates. Both wanted to see the working.

Reviews also changed hands: one practice manager could start a practice’s review and another finish it, with no record of what had happened.

A case log answered both, but it didn’t fit the deadline, so we added it to the backlog.