Remember, the new contract is GOOD for patients!!!

It must be true because the CDO said so. Not only is it good for patients, but its good for dentists as well apparently. Now excuse me Dr Cockcroft but I was under the impression that nGDS had cost the tax paying public an extra £60 million in NHS dental charges. And then of course you have the 500 or so dentists that have left in disgust over the last 18 months, joining the private sector because most of them felt they had no choice.

And what is the end result of all this. There are fewer NHS dentists, with 250000 fewer patients seeing an NHS dentist. So tell me, is it good for patients that it is costing them more? Is it good for patients that fewer of them can actually find an NHS dentist? I was under the impression that the new contract was supposed to resolve the access issue. Did anyone actually believe that.

And even now many people don't understand the new system. Now I would gladly give my patients the nifty little information leaflet that the government created to explain it all......... but we were only sent 200 originally, and these were then recalled about 2 weeks later because of the bit where it said you could have dentures made for about £50. Have we had any fresh information leaflets since?

No - we have a poster, which is very nice I suppose.

Have we had a written manual on where and when to claim what fee band?

No - you can phone up the BSA (the government agency that deals with the collection and collation of payment data) three times with the same question and sometimes get three different answers. Oh and there are those stange Q&A lists on the BSA website, but they don't really help.

We have a situation now where most NHS practice owners now have no confidence in the new contract. We now have a situation where less people can access an NHS dentist, and when they do it invariably costs more. We also now have a situation where dentists are having to put their entire focus on the generation of targets........ because it's financial suicide for their business if they don't (you cannot deliver healthcare to your patients if your business is bancrupt). So, as I ask Dr Cockcroft, how is this better for patients? I need it explaining to me because I'm really thick and I don't understand.