GDC Fails In Its' Own Regulatory Progress
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- Published: Monday, 23 December 2024 10:20
- Written by Peter Ingle
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The GDC has spent a lot of time, effort, and registrant‘s money looking at how it can update the standards it provides. As of the 30th September 2024, there were 123,444 dental professionals on the register and the GDC sets standards that they must all follow. Failure to meet them is likely to have consequences, particularly repeated failures.
Meanwhile the GDC has now clocked up another ‘could do better‘ report from its own regulator, the Professional Standards Authority (PSA). The PSA sets 18 Standards, which regulators are expected to meet. These are not aspirational or gold standards but in many ways similar to the GDC’s ‘must’ requirements. The GDC’s success rate in recent years has been:
- 2020/21 17 of the 18 standards were met
- 2021/22 16 of the 18 standards were met
- 2022/23 16 of the 18 standards were met
The results from the corporate plans, the engagement projects, the dental leadership network, the changes of senior personnel, the reviews, consultations and research that the GDC busies itself with, have now been assessed by the PSA. Their Performance review of the GDC has been published for 2023/2024 and the Council managed to meet 16 of the 18 standards.
One failure is within the General Standards’ subgroup of five Standards. There were failings in the GDC’s performance on Equality Diversity and Inclusion (EDI). One section of the report says: “The GDC told us it ensures that some staff and associates receive EDI training, focused on the EIA process. It was not clear to us what EDI training fitness to practise panellists or other decision makers receive. GDC Council members do not currently receive EDI training. Therefore, we were not assured that the GDC is meeting this outcome.”
The PSA provides notes on areas where there is an “opportunity for improvement”. For the failed standard it commented: “The GDC is reviewing its fitness to practise decision-making guidance to ensure it addresses allegations of discriminatory conduct. We encourage the GDC to ensure that its review of fitness to practise guidance includes guidance for the early stages of the fitness to practise process and that this guidance is published on its website.”
There are four Standards to meet for registration. While the GDC met these it appears that this was a conditional pass and the PSA made clear that they expect the GDC to deliver the promised improvements in the Overseas Registrant Exam. They also expect the GDC to to make further improvements clearing the remaining pre March 8th 2023 backlog of DCP applications.
As long as there has been a PSA the GDC has failed to meet all of the five Fitness to Practice Standards. This year was no different and the GDC only met four of the standards. Once again the GDC did not meet this Standard due to the time it was taking to process fitness to practise cases. While the GDC says that it has put in place measures to improve its fitness to practise timeliness, they have still not made sufficient difference for the GDC to meet the PSA Standard.
The PSA found that, end-to-end fitness to practise timeliness did not appear to have improved since last year. “The GDC is still taking too long to reach decisions in fitness to practise cases.” There was only a slight overall reduction in the total number of cases over 52 weeks old. Worse still, the GDC now has more cases older than 156 weeks than at any time in the last three review periods.
The PSA say that they will closely monitor the GDC’s performance in this area, and have now taken the step of writing to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee, to provide an update on the GDC’s performance.
In a postscript the PSA note the Family Court judgement recently reported in GDPUK which was given after the end of their review period. Their monitoring next year will include the GDC’s response to this case, in which the judgement referred to the GDC’s “woeful ignorance.”
The GDC has now commented on the report with a news item headed. “PSA review recognises GDC progress and challenges.”
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