CDO says assertions in Telegraph letter are ‘difficult to substantiate’
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- Published: Wednesday, 06 January 2016 07:41
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Sara Hurley, chief dental officer for England, has responded to the Daily Telegraph letter signed by Tony Kilcoyne and 400 dentists many of them through GDPUK. She says that the majority of dental care professionals provide an ‘extraordinary service’ and patient satisfaction with quality and care ‘remains high’. She adds that the effects of comments in the letter ‘are not that helpful’ in giving a balanced view of the profession.
Text of CDO England response:
‘I think we all recognise that context is all, and when looking at the overall contribution of the dental profession that is committed to providing dental care in partnership with NHS England, then many of the assertions made in Monday’s Daily Telegraph article are difficult to substantiate,’
‘The reality is the committed majority of dental care professionals provide an extraordinary service and at practice level the evidence confirms that patient satisfaction with quality and care remains high. I am sure that the “negative professional narrative” was not what was intended but the effects created by the comments are not that helpful in giving a balanced view of the public perception about the profession.
‘However, if there is some good to come out of this it is that we have national coverage of the fact that despite the overall improvement in oral health in England, there are still groups of individuals who are difficult to reach with both preventive health messages and information on how they access services.
‘We clearly need to be more innovative, across a variety of activities, if we are to support these individuals in realising opportunities for improving self-care as well as signposting more effective routes into the right care at the right time. On the day that Public Health England has launched Change4life and sugar remains on the health agenda we have raised awareness. Perhaps not all that was intended but it has got the dental profession noticed on a relatively quiet news day.’
Let's have a live TV debate face to face TK and SH
Dear All,The claims made in the Telegraph letter on Monday are NOT difficult to substantiate at all - they are facts !!!
Now I do appreciate the difficult job our new CDO has, having inherited a failed system from the last 10 years which even the Health Select Committee wanted to know who on earth thought such volume-targets were ever going to be a good idea for health
But please, the nhs dental system in England is clearly limited, is failing the public and both adults and children are suffering and the knock-on costs to the rest of the nhs and society are now horrendous!
But why don't we just cut to the chase and simply have a live debate in the mainstream media about the most pressing issues, you know, in the public interest in a fully open and transparent way ???
I'm sure Sara Hurley's massive Media Dept. or the civil servant script-writers one has access to, could arrange this directly, but if any problem I would be happy to attend to this !
Let's do it !!!
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