Dental Laboratories hit the headlines!
National media campaign kicks off for the first time in DLA’s 46 year history!
It’s one of the most important issues in public healthcare – yet until this spring many of the public were still blissfully unaware of it. Now the DLA has made a major breakthrough with our media offensive, getting the real story about the NHS dental contract out in the open for the first time.
With interviews on the BBC Radio 4 flagship current affairs radio programme Today, popular Five Live rush-hour programme
Drive, and extensive coverage in the Daily Mail, this issue is firmly on the media agenda at last.
Seizing the initiative
The first anniversary of the dental contract was marked with much discussion in the media, mainly focusing on the problems of patient access to NHS dentists rather than access to NHS treatments. The DLA therefore took action to spread the message about the hidden truth of the new contract, and several interviews were lined up on 29th March.
Speaking to James Naughtie on Today, DLA Chief Executive Richard Daniels slammed the contract for delivering bad service to patients and forcing many dental laboratories out of business. He said, “Since April 2006, when the new contract came into effect, complex treatments were effectively removed from the NHS. Dentists have been put in a perverse position where the more they prescribe, the less they will earn… If you look at a patient who needed a tooth replacing on the old ‘fee per item’ system, they would normally have been given a crown. Under the new system they’re being given a one-tooth denture, because there is a much greater cost incentive to do that, in terms of time and materials.”
Decline in complex treatments
Throughout the campaign both on the radio and in the newspapers, the DLA not only raised the concerns about lack of access to treatment, but also the type of complex treatment they would receive. As DLA members know, where a patient might once have been prescribed a chrome denture with greater strength and comfort, they may now be given a cheaper acrylic alternative instead. The article in The Daily Mail reported that “in the year since the start of the new contract, dental laboratories have seen a 90 per cent fall in the number of chrome dentures the NHS is ordering.” Richard Daniels told Drive, “the statistics that were shown by the Department of Health last week … showed that for Band 3 treatments there had been a reduction of fifty per cent … and of those fifty per cent they’d gone from complex to simple.”
Dangers to the industry and patients alike Summing up the “crisis” affecting the UK dental laboratory industry, Richard Daniels warned of the long-term fallout for the country, saying: “The dental laboratories are just like coalmines. Once they close, they’ll never re-open. We’re losing an awful lot of skills at the moment and to compound that problem, dentists trying to cut costs are now looking to go overseas for their laboratory work. So some NHS patients may end up with work made by companies outside the EU like China, India and Africa, which unfortunately are not governed by the same regulatory responsibilities as UK laboratories.”
The DLA believes it is essential to convey to dentists and patients alike just how important the Medical Devices Directive regulations are for protecting patient safety – ensuring that only non-toxic and non-irritating materials are used in appliances made by British dental laboratories. Without those safeguards, dentists ordering work from unregulated countries may inadvertently be putting their patients at risk.
DLA member David Smith, Managing Director of Exeter-based laboratory Phoenix Dental Castings, highlighted this point in the Daily Mail, saying, “Some of the minerals that look like gold actually contain aluminium and copper. A dentist would have no way of knowing what materials were being used. All of these base metals can be dangerous in different people’s mouths … If I do not comply with the standards in the UK, I can be fined or even sent to prison. I have to keep purchasing reports and quality control records for five years. There is nothing comparable for appliances made in China, for example. The staff have not been trained to such a high standard and there is no control over what is happening.”
United criticism from dental technicians & dentists
Richard Daniels explained that the concerns raised were not only supported by the DLA membership, but also by the rest of the profession, adding: “Yesterday I was having a conversation with a group of dentists at the British Dental Association – and they told me that prescribing has been set back by 20 years as a direct result of the contract,” Mr Daniels said.
“Patients are not receiving the same complex treatments that they were on the previous system. The whole system is geared towards the dentist being put under extreme financial pressure so that they can’t make the appropriate treatment, and decisions on treatment are being made based on finances rather than clinical need.”
Excellent results
The DLA’s publicity campaign reached over 12 million listeners and hundreds of thousands of readers of national and local newspapers, a substantial achievement. Reviewing the activity, DLA Chief Executive Richard Daniels said, “After years of trying to attract media attention this has been a fantastic response. However, this is only the start. We must build on this success and maintain dentistry’s place on the political map until the Department of Health work towards an agreement that meets the demands of NHS patients and the dental professions.”
