SOP Is Withdrawn As GDPs Discover Target Requirements
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- Published: Tuesday, 05 April 2022 18:26
- Written by Chris Tapper
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Five days into the new NHS dental financial year, NHS England has finally revealed what UDA targets GDPs will face in the next three months.
The British Dental Association slammed the target and branded the announcement by NHSE as “Moves by Government to effectively return to normal working arrangements for NHS dentists in England. The move comes with no meaningful changes to the pandemic restrictions dental teams work to and with infection rates now at an all-time high.”
England’s Chief Dental Officer Dr Sara Hurley and NHS Director for Dentistry Mr Ali Sparke wrote to contractors to say that NHS England has “Agreed to a further exceptional period of support for Q1” by setting targets at 95%.
The email, released late on Tuesday afternoon said “We all recognise the backlog of care which has accumulated during the period where dental services have not operated at full capacity.”
“Many contractors are already delivering over 100%, and it critical for those contractors who are not already there make progress to return as quickly as possible to the pre-pandemic activity levels.”
“Our current plan is for a return to normal contracting arrangements from July 2022, and we will confirm these arrangements separately.”
The official notification for practitioners from NHS England said “For orthodontic services, which have been able to return to normal levels of activity more rapidly, normal contract volumes will be in place for 2022/23.”
BDA News said on its website “The BDA understand close to half of practices were on course to fall below the previous 85% target, set on 1 January 2022 in the midst of the Omicron wave, and would therefore face significant financial penalties. Following pressure from the BDA, NHS England has now set a new minimum threshold of 75% for the last quarter, easing the blow for some practices.”
“From 2019/20 to 2020/21 over £0.6 billion was lost in NHS patient charge revenue as a result of lower patient throughput. Direct government contributions – which had been in long term decline - have had to reach historically high levels in order to maintain operations during the pandemic, and the BDA remains deeply concerned that pressure to ’balance the books’ has driven decision making across government.”
“The BDA has said the government must now deliver on commitments of fundamental reform to halt the growing exodus from the service. A package of ’quick wins’ pledged by NHS England to improve the discredited contractual framework remains in development.”
Dr Shawn Charlwood, Chair of the BDA’s General Dental Practice Committee told BDA news "Whilst the retrospective concession will help some, NHS dentists have effectively now been told to return to ’business as usual’.
"This service is still working to pandemic restrictions, tackling an unprecedented backlog amid staff absences and patient cancellations. This isn’t ’living with COVID’, it’s setting practices up to fail.
"NHS dentistry is haemorrhaging talent while promises of reform remain unfulfilled. The government is yet to show it is ready to put the interests of patients ahead of Treasury accountants."
The late announcement of targets was not warmly welcomed by NHS dental practitioners, with one practitioner quipping on Twitter ‘How very kind of them.”
A few hours before the NHS England announcement, the British Dental Association said on Twitter “As we reported last week, NHS England were unable to confirm new contractual arrangements as the financial year started on Friday 1 April.”
“The profession is in the wholly unsatisfactory situation that it does not know the contractual terms under which it is being asked to operate.”
One dentist summed up the feelings of many practitioners on social media, saying “Isn’t it time we as a profession stood up to NHS England and the government?”
“There should be a refusal to accept any new contract until there has been sufficient time for each and every practice to digest and plan for its implementation.”
Echoing the expressed intentions of an increasing number of GDPs, another dentist said “I’m serving the last 3 weeks of my GDS contract notice. I’m done.”
Another dentist, planning on early retirement wrote on Twitter “One more week and I’m free of this nonsense from NHSE and OCDO.”
Another dentist said cynically that the contract level “Was probably decided in November 2021, but it takes that long for various people in Government to sign the paperwork off.”
Asking for an opinion on the NHSE delay, a poll by @DentistGoneBadd on Twitter demonstrated little faith in NHS England.
So. What do we honestly think about NHS England’s failure to let the profession what targets they are chasing in the first quarter of the new financial year?
— Ex-DentistGoneBadd (@DentistGoneBadd) April 5, 2022
Is NHS England?
One retired NHS dentist told GDPUK “Many practitioners have questioned why NHS England leaves important changes to contractual arrangements till the last minute and it’s almost as if April’s Stress Awareness Month was devised with NHS GDP’s in mind.”
“The Stress Management Society launched its annual stress awareness campaign in April 1992 – the year the Government clawed back 7% of fees from dentists after the overspend which followed the introduction of the new ‘improved’ hybrid capitation/registration and fee-per-item in 1990.”
“That contract, like the 2006 UDA contract, was supposed to take GDP’s off the pure fee-per-item treadmill, by introducing elements which would encourage and fund prevention advice. That clawback in 1992 is seen as the blue touch-paper that initiated the first large tranche of GDP’s leaving the NHS, with many joining the growing ranks of the private Denplan scheme.”
“Early indications from dentists on social media hint at another mass exodus of dentists from the NHS. I was dedicated to the NHS, but frankly, I wish them well.”
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