NHS Dentist......

Toothsmith

Even you must be worried about the way you will be able to practice post April 1st Teerah? I think N.I. gets the same contract as the mainland n'est pas?

12 UDAs for spending 30 mins taking a tooth out and making a single unit plastic denture to replace it (and a patient charge of £189)

OR

3 UDAs for spending 1h + root filling it in order to save it. (£42 patient charge) :eek:

Doing the right thing on the NHS is soon to be a very short cut to the banckruptcy court.

This is about what will happen in the future, I fully appreciate there are dentists around doing perfectly good ethical dentistry on the NHS at the moment.

Teerah

Nope, doesnt affect us over here yet. Will prob come in eventually (2007-2008) but we get to watch how things go first. There isnt the same degree of private dentistry over here though and I take offence that NHS dentistry is equal in some way to substandard dentistry. I am awaiting the big change over your way with a great degree of interest though

Toothsmith

We're talking about two different NHSs Teerah me old mucker. Ours has decayed more than yours.

Look and learn, especially if all the cr*p we get dished over here comes your way.

Hopefully they may have learnt a thing or two though before then.

Ha! listen to me!! Politicians learning from mistakes! Well we can dream.

Teerah

Diff in what way?? We get the same remuneration rates, an extremely high failure to attend rate and a lower standard of dental health. Not to mention much lower prior approval limits and more dental referral officer callups than the mainland. The change is coming but its been pencilled in for 2007-2008 rather than this year.

Toothsmith

I don't know!

I suppose really you must be similar to inner city practices in this country. It's possible to maintain a much bigger list size, as many people on the list only turn up if there's a problem. This would give you reasonable income from registration fees, and yet time to spend on the ones that do come regularly?

Teerah

No, unfortunately this isnt the case regarding the list sizes. Average list size in NI is about 14-1500 if I remember correctly.

Spendless

Toothsmith wrote:

I don't know!

I suppose really you must be similar to inner city practices in this country. It's possible to maintain a much bigger list size, as many people on the list only turn up if there's a problem. This would give you reasonable income from registration fees, and yet time to spend on the ones that do come regularly?

How would you do that? People at my nhs dentists have been taken off the books for not attending, I think within 15 months. I'm sure the reception has a note to that effect above it.
About 12-13 years ago I only went when I had a problem, and when I once rang up was told I'd been taken off. She re-instated me, but a friend who did same thing within last few years got taken off.
I'm actually a bit worried about Mr Spendless over this, cos he got put on the 12 month call about this time last year and I do wonder if they'll quote he hasn't attended for 15 months and therefore they will be knocking him off.
hmmm:think: - think he should chase them up?

Toothsmith

Come April 1st, EVERY NHS PATIENT will be 'knocked off' - by the Government.

Registration with a dentist will be ending. This is supposedly so that everybody has an equal footing with any dentist who has an NHS contract.

A dentist can only say he is 'full' when he is booked up for 8 weeks. A dentist can still prioritise his 'regular' patients, but the definition of that has gone from the 15 months the government used to pay for to patients that have seen the dentist in the last 30 months!

This may sound great if your an NHS patient who has recently found yourself de-registered as you've not been for a while. If you think about it from a dentists point of view though, he may well have up to an extra 30-40% of patients which he is expected to look after, and yet he won't have been paid for them for over a year. Yet he is expected to look after them for the money he was getting for his 15 month registration list.

Another reason why the papers are full of practices quitting the NHS