A new Year is here

Welcome to 2008

I have moved my blog here, because the old one was becoming increasingly difficult to administer....... which is why it was more of a monthly blog than a daily one :(

To be honest, the only real incident worth noting was the recent realisation by my PCT that they had given us too many UDA's to do. It would seem that the original UDA calculations were flawed, and this has been corrected. So instead of being 1000 UDA's short and facing clawback, we find ourselves 200 over. Now that was a nice Christmas present.

Now unlike many dentists out there, the reason we were short is because we didn't change the way we worked. We didn't have 5 minute check up appointments, and we didn't make single tooth partials for extracted lower 8's. We did dentistry the best way we knew how, and if the patient wanted their crown doing on the NHS, then we did it. Our NHS crown technician still seems to make a reasonable crown for a reasonable cost........ and he is one of the ones that isn't suffering under the new contract. He seems to make a concerted effort to raise his standards. And of course if they wanted it privately then we gladly did that for them also, and damn the UDA's.

Targets do one thing for health care, and that's ruin it. oGDS was the most productive, efficient and underfunded aspect of the NHS. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't broken to such a degree that we needed to focre 10% of the workforce into the private sector. The new contract will destroy NHS dentistry. It will eventually result in a core service manned by depressed, under skilled dentists, employed by corporate behemoths who care little for the well being of the employees or the patients.

More and more dentists will migrate to the private sector, taking those with the ability to pay with them. Everyone else will have to make do with whatever service remains. Even more so than at present, it will be a lottery. Ten years from now NHS dentists will be a collection of students, oversees graduates, corporate monsters and a few die hard NHS fanatics. Those practice owners with any serious business sense will have left. Those patients wanting any kind of meaningful patient journey will have left with them.

Who can say what the future will bring. One thing I do know, it will bring wealth to those who are ready to go forward into the brave new world.