Colwyn ‘disappointed’ at absence of GDC legislation
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- Published: Tuesday, 24 May 2016 13:22
- Written by News Editor
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Lord Colwyn, speaking in the House of Lords following the Queen’s speech, said he was ‘disappointed’ that parliamentary time had still not been found to introduce a Bill which would simplify and modernise the regulatory framework for dentists and more than a million of their fellow healthcare workers in Britain. He called on the Minister set out a clear timetable for action.
He also took the Government to task for their being no mention of improving health outcomes in the Queen’s Speech, although statistics clearly show why oral health deserves much more attention this Parliament. One in four five-year-olds in England has tooth decay, and the number of children facing hospital admission for tooth extractions under general anaesthesia went up by a quarter between 2010-11 and 2014-15. Although new data showed modest improvements in the oral health of English children, the pace of progress is significantly slower than in Scotland and Wales, where devolved Governments have introduced innovative preventive dental health programmes.
Data also show that despite the small overall improvement, regional and social He welcomed the proposed measures to establish a soft drinks industry levy to help tackle childhood obesity, and he supported Baroness Walmsley, in the use of fluoridation, which, he said, should be much more widespread than it is at the moment.
He was pleased to see that access to NHS dentistry continued to increase, however, there were still many areas where access to a dentist remains a significant challenge and there is anecdotal evidence of constituencies where not a single practice accepts new NHS patients.
He said that this was largely due to the way NHS dentistry is currently commissioned, with the current dental contract putting a cap on how many patients each dentist can see in a year. He told the Lords that this April was the 10th anniversary of the introduction of the current contract, and to mark the occasion the British Dental Association conducted a survey of more than 1,200 dentists. Seven out of 10 said that the current contract prevented them being able to take on more national health patients.
He said it was crucial that the new contract for NHS dentistry improved access and rewarded dentists for keeping their patients healthy rather than for carrying out interventions, as is currently the case. He pointed out that dentists and patients were promised a new contract back in 2010, but he accused the Government of dragging their feet and the new arrangements are not expected to be rolled out earlier than 2018-19. He also remarked that it seemed increasingly likely that ‘we might end up with little more than a watered-down version of the current system’.
“How can a system improve oral health, deliver prevention and provide continuing quality care when the proposed contract continues to offer perverse incentives to treat instead of rewarding dentists for improvement in oral health”, he asked. Both dentists and their patients deserved a contract with a square focus on prevention, and neither of the options being tested goes far enough in meeting that objective.
Finally he raised the issue of ‘the recent hike in charges for NHS dental services’. Fees for treatment are going up above inflation, by 5% this year and a further 5% next year. Lord Colwyn said he feared that ‘this unprecedented increase will discourage patients who most need to see the dentist from going to see one, and will undermine the relationship between patients and practitioners’.
He was also concerned that the money raised this way was not ring-fenced to be spent on improving dental care or access to dental services. Dentists were being asked in practice to play the role of tax collector while their patients are singled out to subsidise the wider health service. He pointed out that expenditure on primary-care NHS dentistry as a proportion of the total spending had gone down by 13% in cash terms over the past four years, while proceeds from dental charges were going up even before this latest surge in prices. He said: “Treating dental patients as a source of easy money is not fair and, as the increasing sums spent on hospital extractions show, it is also a false economy.”
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