It was the 15th January 2010 when I was part of the first contract meeting at the DoH and 11 months later we have had the announcement of the pilots this week. Members of the GDPC have been working in the five work streams, which were devised originally by Labour in response to the Steele Review and the Health Select Committee that was so critical of their changes to NHS Dentistry.
The makeup of the groups have included GDPs including GDPUK member Alisdair McKendrick, other invited GDPs and an array of people involved in Primary Care Dentistry from Consultants in Dental Public Heath, to PCT commissioners and BSA staff. There have been many Civil Servants co-ordinating meetings and attending, including the “money men” who I will return to later.
My position was on the Contracts Group, which was challenged with designing contract types to fit into the accepted review conclusions of Prof Steele. The group was ably chaired throughout its work by Deputy CDO Sue Gregory. It was clear for all to see that Sue wished the whole process to be open and transparent, I am sure some Civil Servants aligned to nGDS and Labour spin would have wished to take control, but as was evident from Sue Gregory’s comments at LDC Officials Day, she had concluded nGDS a failure, and such work needed someone who understood that. During the transition of Labour to Coalition the work has changed to fit in with the political policy with a redrawing of the map towards outcomes instead of activity targets.
Interestingly the finance group never met, well not with the people who were assigned to the workstream and the GDPC representatives. I have no doubt the finance people within the DoH have met often and reacted to what the other work streams were producing.

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