COVID-19 - Protecting your financial position
We want to confirm what we plan to do to help protect your financial position and wellbeing during this difficult time.
We recognise the significant impact that COVID-19 is having on healthcare and that members in private practice have experienced a significant drop in their income. We are therefore offering you two options for reducing the subscription you pay us.
The first option offers you a subscription relief payment if you are continuing with any clinical activity.
The second option is available if you are considering ceasing clinical practice altogether for a period of time.
Option one - subscription relief payment
If you continue to practise, you will receive a payment that is equivalent to two months’ subscription paid to you, in recognition of the extraordinary situation we are in.
We will be in contact with you again about your subscription relief payment, however we do not currently hold an email address for you.
It’s vitally important that you provide us with an email address so we can issue further instructions about your subscription relief payment. You can do this by clicking here.
Once we have your email address, we will be in touch with you again in the next few weeks about this payment. You do not need to call or email either South Africa Dental Association (SADA) or Dental Protection at this stage if you want to receive this subscription relief payment.
We are sharing our intent to help in this way now so that the cost of subscriptions is one less thing for you to be concerned about. This is an unprecedented move for Dental Protection and although we are still finalising the process, we expect to start issuing these payments within the next four to six weeks providing we have an email address for you.
If your membership is due to renew, you will receive your renewal documentation in the usual way, stating the amount due. Please ensure that you submit your annual renewal in full as normal, as the two months’ subscription relief payment will be made to you as a separate credit and therefore should not be deducted from the amount stated on your renewal notice. If you pay by Direct Debit, your monthly payments will continue as normal.
We will also continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation and will keep the level and duration of subscription relief on offer under active review.
Option Two - become a deferred member of Dental Protection
If you are considering or have already had to make the difficult decision to cease practice completely for more than 30 days, you can opt to become a deferred member of Dental Protection. Please view here to learn more about deferred membership and what this would mean for you.
To defer your membership, please contact SADA in the usual way.
You do not need to contact us if you wish to receive a subscription relief payment. We will assume that this is your preferred option unless you notify SADA that you are requesting deferred membership (Option Two).
Please remember to update your email address here
Protecting your wellbeing
We have extended our counselling service, so if you are experiencing any work-related stress or stress you feel is impacting on your practise, please don’t hesitate to use this service.
You can find out more about this here
We hope that the details set out in this communication will help you during this difficult time. We will monitor the situation in the coming weeks and months and continue to actively review ways we can support you.