British dentists criticise reforms

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UK dentists are still unhappy with recent Government reforms of public dental care.

The British Dental Association (BDA) has again spoken out against its government's recent dental reforms.

At the heart of the reforms is a new contract that uses a measuring system called ‘units of dental activity (UDA)' to assess practices' performance.

On the day a Department of Health report, ‘NHS Dental Reforms: One year on', was published, Peter Ward, chief executive of the BDA, said: "This first year report on the new untested contract for dentists justifies our concerns and will do little to rebuild trust with the profession.

"By the government's own admission, we now have fewer NHS dentists and access to care for patients remains patchy.

"The report recognises the importance of genuine local flexibility for patient care but this can only be achieved by moving away from the rigidity of this crude target-driven contract. The government must start listening to the profession and patients if local commissioning is to provide the services that local communities deserve."

The BDA has repeatedly called on the Government to scrap the unit of dental activity (UDA) as the only way of measuring performance.

Ward said: "Contractual performance has to be monitored, but UDAs are only a single and very crude method. We need a more sophisticated approach which is sensitive to the reality of delivering dental care to patients and which supports preventive care, rather than works against it."

The BDA also claims that dental care is not being adequately funded.

In the first year of the dental reforms, patient charges were supposed to generate £634 million, but only £475 million has been charged.

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