Dental services 'deteriorating'

The Department's 2006 criteria for success included:

• Patient experience;
• Clinical quality;
• NHS commissioning; and
• Improving dentists' working lives.

Various measures of access to dental services indicate that the situation is deteriorating. These include:

• The numbers of dentists working for the NHS and the number of courses of treatment provided has fallen slightly.
• The total number of patients seen by an NHS dentist between December 2005 and December 2007 has fallen by 900,000 compared with the two years up to March 2006.
• Access is uneven across the country.
• The introduction of the new charging system has simplified the system for patients but problems remain.
• The new contract was meant to improve preventive care but dentists claim it fails to provide the time and the financial incentive to do so.
• The number of complex treatments - including laboratory work, root canal treatments - has fallen markedly whilst the number of tooth extractions has increased. The reason for the decline in the number of complex treatments has not been explained satisfactorily.

The Committee concludes that PCT commissioning of dental services has been poor and that the new remuneration system based on UDAs has proved extremely unpopular with dentists. It finds it extraordinary that the Department did not pilot or test the UDA payment system before it was introduced in 2006 and makes a number of recommendations for improving dental services.

Found this story interesting?
Spread the news by clicking below to add it to your bookmarking service:

• Del.icio.us
• Digg this
• Reddit!