Verivius for dental practices

Verivius v1 ships sector setups for six sectors today (independent secondary care, dental, adult social care, independent ambulance, Private Clinic, secure patient transport on the ambulance pack), with three more in active build (GP practices, diagnostic imaging, termination of pregnancy). When a dental practice signs up, the platform behaves the same way as it does for any other sector. Same dashboard zones, same evidence loop, same audit trail. The content the platform ships with is what changes for dental.

Three things change. The vocabulary on every page (treating practitioner instead of clinician where dental hygienists and therapists treat independently; treatment plan as a dental-specific concept distinct from a care plan). The list of incident, complaint and safeguarding categories (wrong tooth extraction, HTM 01-05 decontamination breaches, IR(ME)R radiation incidents, GDC fitness-to-practise complaints). The assurance calendar pre-populated with the recurring items a dental practice has to evidence (autoclave validation, IRMER quarterly review, medical emergency drug check, GDC registration renewal per registrant).

Everything else (the lifecycle shape, the audit log, the monthly governance email, the Mock Inspection workflow) is the same as the generic walkthrough at /product. The sector setup adds dental-specific content on top of the core platform; it does not change how the platform works.

A dental practice in England sits under more layers than a generic clinical service. Verivius surfaces each layer where it matters, citing the regulation verbatim with the source.

• CQC under the Health and Social Care Act 2008. Most private dental practices register for "treatment of disease, disorder or injury". Practices offering implants or IV sedation also register for "surgical procedures". The five key questions under the Single Assessment Framework apply the same way as for any CQC-regulated service.
• General Dental Council (GDC). Professional regulator for individual dentists, dental hygienists, dental therapists, dental nurses, dental technicians and clinical dental technicians. Practice-level CQC plus individual-level GDC is the dual-regulation model. Verivius tracks GDC registration per registrant in the people lifecycle.
• HTM 01-05. The Department of Health technical memorandum on decontamination in primary care dental practices. The decontamination standard CQC inspectors check against. Verivius's dental assurance calendar pre-populates with the HTM 01-05 audit cadence.
• IR(ME)R 2017. The Ionising Radiation (Medical Exposure) Regulations. Bitewings, OPGs, CBCT scans all sit under IRMER duties. Verivius tracks IRMER practitioner and operator currency in the training matrix and schedules the quarterly IRMER review on the assurance calendar.
• NHS England (where applicable). NHS GDS or PDS contract holders have additional contractual and complaints duties beyond CQC, including the NHS Complaints Regulations 2009 acknowledgment timeline. Verivius surfaces the NHS complaints framework on every complaint record where the workspace is flagged as NHS-contracted.

Where the generic platform offers generic categories (clinical incident, medication error, surgical complication), the dental sector setup adds the categories a dental practice actually sees. Each category surfaces the framework panel (CQC notification rules, Duty of Candour triggers, GDC fitness-to-practise routes) for that category.

Clinical incident categories (dental-specific): wrong tooth extracted, wrong tooth treated, local anaesthetic dosing or wrong-side error, IV sedation administration error, inhalation or aspiration of foreign body (instrument, tooth fragment, crown), nerve injury post-treatment (lingual, inferior alveolar, mental), failed endodontic treatment or root perforation, dental implant failure within 12 months of placement.

Decontamination and infection prevention (HTM 01-05): autoclave failure or breach of decontamination cycle, sharps injury to staff (RIDDOR notifiable), sharps injury to patient.

Radiology (IRMER 2017): unintended or accidental exposure to ionising radiation (notifiable to CQC via the IR(ME)R duty-holder when exposure significantly greater than intended), repeat exposure required due to operator or equipment fault.

Complaints: treatment outcome or quality, cost or quote or billing, communication or informed consent, staff conduct. Where the practice holds an NHS contract, the NHS Complaints Regulations 2009 framework surfaces alongside the CQC Reg 16 framework.

Safeguarding: suspected dental neglect of a child (always-required local authority safeguarding referral), adult-at-risk identified during dental treatment, disclosure of domestic abuse during dental consultation.

Provisioning a dental practice on Verivius seeds the assurance calendar with nine sector-specific recurring items. Each item schedules itself on the right cadence, allocates to the appropriate governance role, and gets marked complete with evidence attached.

• Weekly: HTM 01-05 decontamination audit; resuscitation equipment check.
• Monthly: medical emergency drug expiry check (glucose, GTN, salbutamol, midazolam, adrenaline, aspirin).
• Quarterly: IR(ME)R review covering referrer, practitioner and operator currency plus any radiography incidents; dental clinical record audit against FGDP guidelines; practice self-inspection audit against the five CQC key questions.
• Annual: autoclave validation (independent, per HTM 01-05); GDC registration renewal per registrant on the team; fire risk assessment review.

The calendar is the platform's heartbeat. An inspector who asks "show me your decontamination audit log for the past six months" gets it from the assurance calendar in seconds, with evidence attached per occurrence.

The training matrix layers dental-specific competencies on top of the generic healthcare set (basic life support, anaphylaxis management, fire safety, manual handling, infection prevention and control, information governance, equality and diversity, safeguarding adults level 1, safeguarding children level 1, Mental Capacity Act, consent for treatment).

Dental-specific competencies tracked per registrant:

• HTM 01-05 Decontamination in Primary Care Dental Practices (24-monthly)
• IR(ME)R local rules (annually)
• Medical emergencies in dental practice (annually)
• Dental amalgam safe handling (36-monthly)
• Dental radiography for operators and practitioners (36-monthly)
• GDC CPD compliance (annually; 100 hours over five years per registrant)
• Cross-infection control in dentistry (annually)
• Dental clinical record keeping (36-monthly)
• Local anaesthetic safety (24-monthly)
• Oral cancer screening (36-monthly)

Renewal alerts fire 60 days before expiry. The GDC CPD tracking specifically counts hours per registrant against the rolling five-year cycle and flags any registrant approaching the cycle-end without sufficient hours logged.

On a typical primary-care dental inspection, the inspector looks at:

• The decontamination room workflow against HTM 01-05. Inspectors with a clinical background look here before any record. Verivius surfaces the HTM 01-05 weekly audit log with the most recent ten sign-offs.
• IRMER local rules and the radiography log. Inspectors check that the rules are current, that the radiation protection supervisor is named, and that the quarterly review has been done. Verivius surfaces the IRMER quarterly review log + the radiography incident sub-log.
• GDC registration per registrant. Verivius's people lifecycle shows current GDC registration for each clinical team member, with the next renewal date.
• Consent. Inspectors sample consent forms across recent treatment plans. Verivius's notes audit covers the consent form against FGDP and GDC standards.
• Significant events. The inspector samples how the practice learns from incidents. Not how few it has, but whether each one led to a documented analysis with closed actions. Verivius surfaces the incident-to-action trail per record.
• Safeguarding. Inspectors check that the practice has a safeguarding lead, that staff know the referral pathway, and that any concerns raised have been referred to the local authority. Verivius's safeguarding lifecycle tracks this end-to-end.

None of this is unique to Verivius. These are the questions CQC inspectors ask of every primary-care dental practice. The difference is whether the evidence is one filter away on a screen or two days of hunting through a shared drive.

The dental sector setup is live in Verivius v1. The taxonomy (incident, complaint and safeguarding categories), the training-matrix content (~23 dental-specific competencies) and the assurance calendar (~9 dental-specific recurring items) are populated against primary regulatory sources. You can sign up directly and have the dental content loaded into your account from day one.

If you run a dental practice and want to take a look before signing up, get in touch using the form below.