A dentist says his surgery is being forced to pay £150,000 back to the health service effectively because his patients ‘are being looked after better’.
Rob Mew, who owns Fairfield House Dental Surgery in Exmouth, Devon, says his practice has around 19,000 NHS patients – and is one of the few left in the county still taking any.
The NHS dentistry payment contract requires practices to carry out a set number of check-ups or treatments, which are scored as Units of Dental Activity (UDA) and tallied up.
For example, a check-up is worth one UDA, while a filling is worth three.
Speaking to The Mirror, Rob said his surgery has been ordered to repay £50,000 a month over three months despite having an all-time high number of patients on its books.
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He told the newspaper: ‘We are being penalised for preventing patients requiring more UDAs.
‘The clawback is for not doing enough UDAs but when patients are being looked after better they don’t have as much need for dental work.’
Rob said his surgery carries out free outreach work in the local community to improve dental health.
It also gives patients a check-up every year, whereas many other clinics call the bulk of their patients back every two years.
He warned the NHS dentistry funding model is driving dentists away from the public sector, saying Fairfield House is only able to carry on as an NHS practice out of ‘good will’.
Devon has been described as one of several ‘dental deserts’ in the UK where access to NHS dental care is severely limited.
Last year’s GP Patient Survey found 28% of patients registered with an NHS dental clinic could not get an appointment when they tried, compared to an England-wide average of 16%.
The government has admitted that it’s currently ‘less cost effective’ for dentists to carry out complex treatments like crowns and bridges and has pledged to ‘overhaul the dental contract’.
Plans set to be unveiled today will reportedly include a proposal by ministers that NHS dentists are given enough money to provide a set number of unscheduled appointments.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: ‘This government inherited a broken NHS dental system but we are getting on with fixing it through our 10 Year Health Plan.
‘We have already begun the rollout of 700,000 extra urgent dental appointments, a ‘golden hello’ scheme is underway to recruit dentists to areas with the most need and we are reforming the NHS dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists – including introducing tie-ins for those trained in the NHS.’
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