SNOMED Enforcement In Dentistry To Commence
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- Published: Saturday, 01 April 2023 07:33
- Written by Peter Ingle
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The adoption of SNOMED Clinical Terms (SNOMED) in UK dentistry has not run a smooth course. It may have been out of the dental headlines for a while, but the many dental teams who had hoped that it had been quietly abandoned will be alarmed by a new announcement.
Originally planned to be introduced to dentistry in 2019, a myriad of problems with the project have resulted in repeated postponements.
SNOMED’s implementation across the NHS has been led by NHSX, established in early 2019 by the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock. However its introduction to dentistry has been reliant upon the involvement of the Office of the Chief Dental Officer (OCDO) which has its own Digital project team. The OCDO Digital Organisation Lead Team Section (OCDO DOLTS), who have been supporting SNOMED’s introduction across dentistry in England.
This article was first published on 1st April 2023.
Compulsory use of SNOMED in dental practice was set for 2019, deferred to April 2020, then April 2021, and ’finally’ September 2021. However until now its use has not been enforced. This could have been assumed to be primarily to avoid red faces at OCDO, should the project’s management come under scrutiny.
Apart from the unanswered question of the benefits that will be gained from SNOMED above and beyond data that which was seamlessly collected under the pre-2006 NHS contract, the readiness of both NHS England (NHSE) and the Business Services Authority (BSA) to collect or use such data remains doubtful. An added level of confusion has come from the uncertainty about which software systems are capable of collecting the data.
While members of the Dental Software Suppliers Association (DSSA) claim that all member systems are compliant, it appears though that this does not cover all software systems currently in use.
Moreover a project manager for the OCDO DOLTS has confirmed to GDPUK that there had been few checks on the quality of the actual information that systems were collecting.
Despite this it appears that with an outgoing CDO looking to burnish her legacy will now put decisive action in place. Given that the use of SNOMED has been a legal requirement since 2021, as a member of the OCDO team pointed out to GDPUK at the recent BDIA Showcase exhibition, the key if not sole benefit of using SNOMED at present is that it avoids breaking the law.
As the OCDO officials warmed to this theme, failure to use SNOMED was compared by them somewhat confusingly as ’Dentists driving a car while looking at their mobile phone’.
Following this exchange it came as no surprise to GDPUK when it received a message from senior OCDO DOLT Officer Brian Egin (pictured above) that OCDO would now be acting to identify non-compliant dental practices. In co-operation with dental regulators and local police forces, the first practices can expect to receive unannounced compliance visits following covert investigations, an area in which the GDC have some expertise.
A special group of CQC compliance experts - Digital Undercover Mobile Behaviour Observers (DUMBOs) along with local constabularies - there to provide muscle and tasers, will raid suspect practices and if they can show that SNOMED codes are not being collected as required, arrests will then surely follow.
GDPUK asked its OCDO DOLTS source if they thought that dentists and their teams might resist arrest.
"Many of them have been working under the UDA contract since 2006", he explained. “I think they will be glad that at last it is over and the game is up, they must realise that they can’t run forever. It will be a fair cop".
Important Editorial note:
All acronyms used in this piece were offered one-to-one counselling in accordance with the guidelines contained within the Acronym Respect Society Engagement (ARSE) handbook.
Further note:
This article was first published on 1st April 2023.
Boom.boom
Actually had me till DUMBOs .Well done Tony!
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