£3m cost of dental 'flaws'

FLAWS in the controversial Government contract with NHS dentists are costing the region's taxpayers millions of pounds each year, according to figures obtained for primary care trusts across the country, writes the WMN's Lyn Barton.

The Conservative Party say the "botched" contract is exploiting patients by providing an incentive for dentists to call them back too often and split up their treatment unnecessarily – leading to many patients being charged for several courses of treatment instead of one.

According to the figures, there were 219,000 unnecessary treatments across Devon and Cornwall in the past year due to patients re-attending within three months. The total extra cost to patients in the region was more than £3 million.

Under the new contract, dentists are paid by PCTs for NHS work and receive a set salary for an expected amount of work. Under the old contract, dentists "charged" the NHS for each piece of work.

Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said the whole dental system was a shambles with millions of people overcharged for services while millions more could not even get on an NHS dentist's patient list.

"Labour's management of NHS dentistry has been appalling," he said. "Not only have millions been left without a dentist, but now we learn that those who do have one are often being charged more money than they should be.

"The blame here lies with Labour's botched dental contract, which incentivises dentists to increase the number of charges to patients and has led to such drastic cuts in the number of people being able to find an NHS dentist."

Mr Lansley called on the Government to start afresh with NHS dental treatment and scrap the current contracts.

"The Government urgently needs to admit that the dental contract has been a monumental failure, get a grip and put an end to these practices immediately.

"At the moment, we're all losing out, those who do have a dentist are paying wrongful charges and those who don't are being blocked from finding one because there aren't enough appointments left."

NHS Guidance states that no patient should be called back to their dentist for a check-up within three months. Neither should they have courses of treatment split up over this period.

But according to figures obtained by the Conservative Party for every primary care trust in Britain, if guidelines had been followed, over the course of a year, up to 6.5 million slots could have been freed up for people who did not have an NHS dentist.

This would provide one course of treatment for the 7.4 million patients unable to find an NHS dentist since the new contract was introduced in April 2006.

The Conservatives claim that in total, patients would have saved up to £109 million in incorrect dental charges, some 23 per cent of the £475 million that patients pay for treatment every year.

The Conservatives claim that the total number of unnecessary courses of treatments due to patients re-attending within three months amounts to:

- 74,000 in Cornwall PCT

- 92,000 in Devon PCT

- 35,000 in Plymouth PCT

- 18,000 in Torbay Care Trust.

The Conservatives further claim that this situation has led to an extra total cost to patients of:

- £1.2 million in Cornwall

- £1.5 million in Devon

- £600,000 in Plymouth

- £300,000 in Torbay.

There was no-one available to comment on the figures at Cornwall PCT or Devon PCT.