Indemnifier Calls Out GDC For Human Cost Of Its Failures
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- Published: Wednesday, 10 August 2022 12:59
- Written by Peter Ingle
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The nature of indemnifiers work could be expected to temper their willingness to criticise the GDC. Despite this, John Makin, head of the Dental Defence Union (DDU), has had a letter published in The Guardian going public with some of the damage being done as a result of the regulators continued failings.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/aug/09/delay-in-resolving-complaints-is-worsening-patient-access-to-dentists
In the letter he refers to avoidable delays in the disciplinary process, and points out that this is damaging to the morale of the profession. This directly and indirectly “deprives patients of dental care,” at a time when there are already very severe access problems.
The DDU has also been responding to the Professional Standards Authority (PSA) recent performance review of the GDC. The DDU refer to the ‘human cost’ of the failings in the GDC’s fitness to practice (FtP) process. Once again the PSA had found that the regulator was not meeting the required standards when it came to FtP.
The DDU has urged the regulator to re-double its efforts to improve it’s fitness to practice processes.
To illustrate the human impact of delays in GDC investigations, the DDU also published two anonymised examples where registrants suffered avoidable delays and stress.
In the first case a single patient complaint resulted in the imposition of conditions by an interim orders committee (IOC) in November 2020. The GDC requested that the condition apply for 18 months, however the DDU’s barrister argued that this was excessive and the IOC decided that 12 months would allow the GDC to complete it’s investigations. Then in September 2021 the GDC announced that it would seek an extension to the period of conditions in the High Court. When the DDU solicitor asked the GDC what progress had been made in the investigation, the GDC replied that a request to the practice for records had only been made that week and an expert witness had not yet been commissioned. At the IOC review in October 2021 the DDU’s barrister explained that the IOC should be carrying out a risk assessment and not be punishing the dentist because of the GDC’s slow investigations. The IOC then concluded that conditions were no longer needed and they were lifted immediately.
In the second case, a DDU member was suspended by the IOC in February 2021 for 15 months. The DDU solicitor repeatedly wrote to the GDC to ask them to clarify timescales for the substantive case. In February 2022 - one year after the initial IOC - they received a response saying that, "unfortunately, we are not able give a timescale at present. The risk is that we could give you a date by which the disclosure would be made and then not honour it." At the IOC review hearing in March 2022, the DDU’s barrister pointed out that the committee at the original hearing had determined that the suspension order should be imposed for 15 months, which was considered enough time for the GDC to complete its investigation. The DDU’s barrister added that in this case, confidence in the regulator would be hugely undermined if a senior dentist could be suspended from practice and then left in limbo for over a year without the case being progressed. The IOC agreed with his analysis and determined that the suspension should be lifted, and conditions were imposed instead.
As the DDU wrote in their response to the PSA, “Behind every FtP case and every statistic sits a registrant – as well as their patients, colleagues, family and friends – all of whom can be impacted by a member of the dental team being subjected to unnecessarily protracted FtP processes. Being involved in an FtP investigation at the GDC can be one the most stressful experiences a dentist has in their career.”
Meanwhile in their annual report for 2021 the GDC stated that the median time for initial hearings to start was 337 days (11 months and 2 days) from referral by case examiners, compared to 296 days (9 months and 22 days) in 2020.
There are serious questions about the unnecessary damage to registrant’s mental health that are occurring as a result of the GDC’s persistent shortcomings. Despite FOI requests the GDC continues to refuse to disclose the numbers registrants that have taken their lives during FtP proceedings. The GDC has also refused to discuss what, if any measures, it has taken to risk assess the effects of FtP on registrants mental health and well-being.
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