Maxim Moskalenko, CEO “German Dentistry”
Compared to 2022, the situation has not become worse. It just looks different now. To be honest, we have had a lot of new patients. After all, there has been a great migration — there are people who have moved. Some patients who were previously treated in our Kharkiv clinic. There are people from the East of Ukraine, from the South of Ukraine. People move a lot between cities. People who have now gone abroad, they look for an ambulance when they arrive. They find us through friends and on the Internet. We saw this trend last year when we started working in the spring. We looked at who was contacting us and saw that 80% are people we don't know. And this trend continues. But our regular customer base, we don't know what's wrong with them. In July-August there were a lot of appeals. Apparently, before school, everyone came, did everything necessary and left. In October-November it was also more or less flat. Then the shelling started and the demand became unpredictable, because the patients immediately react to it. But there is a flow of patients, there are new patients. Our regular patients also come in, so it's a pleasure. We did not expect to be able to keep the situation under control so well.The situation with the staff is much worse. We thought it was difficult before the war, when there was demand and there was not enough staff. However, this is not comparable to what we have now. Financial motivation encourages people to look for new places with better conditions.
As for the average staff, the bar of their expected salary is constantly growing. We try to attract such employees to other areas in order to maximally load them with their work. It takes time to find an adequate employee. And then it must be integrated, trained, lengthened, so that the person gets used to our work. And you usually need to work today. Dentists mostly cannot work with two hands, they need additional hands of assistants. That is, doctors want to work, patients want to be treated, and we cannot provide it because there are not enough people.
In addition, we must take into account that specialists who have gone abroad are active people, professionals, they are likely to find a job there and will not return. It also affects personnel policy.Regarding the forecasts for medicine. The war continues and it drags on for years. The state of uncertainty is holding back people's demand for medical services. That is, not for urgent or critical situations, but with cases of full rehabilitation, for aesthetic reasons, with medical conditions where you can wait, they do not run to the hospital, because no one understands how it will happen next. It is difficult to plan what will happen in 2-3 years.
It is clear that 2024 will be more or less the same as 2023. If it gets better, everyone will be happy. I don't think it will be fundamentally worse. What will happen in a couple of years is a question. What will happen to the country, with the people, with the demand for services, with medical institutions. Who will we provide our services to? Will there be people who are still hesitant to go - not to go? I'm not talking about those who are thinking of coming back or not.
These are the questions that cause concern.
