NHS dental cover 'crisis' despite £45m investment

A £45 MILLION drive by the Scottish Executive to boost access to NHS dentistry has backfired and the service is now in crisis, it was claimed yesterday.

The huge investment aimed to increase the number of Scots able to get dental treatment on the NHS. But the British Dental Association (BDA) yesterday said the Executive's policy was actually making the problem worse.

Under an incentives scheme, dentists receive extra payments if they can prove they are committed to the NHS. But the Executive's definition of commitment has angered many dentists who have not qualified for the extra cash despite treating thousands on the NHS.

Figures obtained by the BDA show that, two years after the policy came in, the number of dentists deemed to be committed to the NHS has plummeted. There are now 344 practices providing NHS care but not eligible for payments based on the measure of commitment - that is down 32 per cent in a year.

It means nearly 40 per cent of practices treating NHS patients are no longer considered committed - compared with less than 30 per cent a year ago.

To qualify for allowances worth thousands of pounds, a dentist must treat at least 500 NHS patients, and at least 100 of these need to be NHS fee-paying adults. A reduction in the number of NHS patients on a list could also mean a practice is deemed to be uncommitted.

This may mean a practice treating 1,500 children as NHS patients but fewer than 100 fee-paying adults is not seen as committed to the NHS.

Many dentists say that if they are unable to claim the incentives, they will have to take on more private work.

Colin Crawford, chairman of the BDA's Scottish dental practice committee, said: "In many parts of Scotland, NHS dentistry is in crisis. The Executive has introduced, and chosen to persist with, a definition of commitment to the NHS that is clearly flawed.

"These figures show that, far from helping deliver the funding intended to promote NHS dental care, the Executive's criteria are actually leading to many NHS practitioners being disqualified from receiving it."

The BDA wants a sliding scale of commitment introduced.

Figures suggest a third of children and more than 50 per cent of adults in Scotland do not have an NHS dentist. High levels of dental disease have also been found in youngsters.

Lewis Macdonald, the deputy health minister, said: "Dental practices that treat all categories of patients on the NHS are rewarded. Those that pick and choose which categories of patients they wish to treat and deny patients access to NHS dentistry will not be."