Mirror.co.uk: DENTIST QUEUES BANNED

QUEUES to sign up with new NHS dentists are to be banned by the Government.

Instead, people will have to make an appointment or register by phone to halt the long lines that have embarrassed Labour.

Dentistry minister Rosie Winterton told Primary Care Trusts it was “unacceptable” that people were forced to queue up for hours.

She added: “Of course, we want to consign the queues to history.”

So, rather than fix the abysmal National Health Service system and promote the privatization of British dentistry the Tony Blair Labour government decides it is better to “cover-up” the problem.

Labour has failed on Tony Blair’s 1999 promise that everyone in Britain would able to see a dentist for free within two years.

In some parts of the country, just one in five people have access to an NHS dentist.

Unpopular contracts being introduced by the Government are likely to make the problem worse.

The BBC reported that in parts of the country, NHS dentists who are converting to private practice in protest at the new contracts have been barred from continuing to treat children for free.

An “All or Nothing” mentality with the NHS will sink the entire NHS system.

Is this what British dentistry needs? A revolutionary private system?

You betcha…….

Previous:

NHS Dentistry Watch: One in five dentists ready to leave NHS

Dentistry Today: Failed Asylum Seeker Poses as a Dentist

Dentistry Today: Many Dentists “Set to Quit NHS”

NHS Dentistry Watch: Poll Says Dentists Will Still Quit

NHS Dentistry Watch: More Dentists Now, More Dentists Later

NHS Dentistry Watch: Dentists Reject £295 million Scottish Executive Deal

Dentistry Today: NHS Dentistry Near Collapse?

NHS Dentistry Watch: Disaster Warning

National Health Service Watch: The Doctors Complain

NHS Dentistry Watch: Do It Yourself Extraction

Related:

Will dentist reforms make a difference?

Blair ‘powerless over dentists’

NHS dentists ‘disaster’ warning

Shake-up of NHS dentistry planned

Q&A: Dentist reforms

Technorati Tags: dentistry, NHS, NHSdentistry, NationalHealthService, Britishdentistry, UKdentistry, dentist, dental

The reception at the new City Dental in Stockholm 24 November 2005. The clinic, staffed by Polish dentists, opened earlier this month and sees a continious streem od Swedes who are searching for a cheaper alternative to the expensive Swedish clinics. The Polish dentists will leave after six months to avoid paying taxes and will be replaced by new.

AFP has Polish dentists and Thai doctors a toothache for Swedish model.

Sweden’s oft-criticized healthcare system has become the arena for competition from low-cost countries which are offering high-quality services at cut prices, challenging the Scandinavian country’s famous social model. Foreign health professionals are giving Swedes frustrated with long queues and worsening service in public healthcare the cheap private-sector alternative many have been looking for.

Like “the Polish plumber”, who in France has come to symbolize the challenges of low-cost services from new EU members, Swedes are grappling with the phenomenon of Polish dentists and Thai doctors, who are offering services at half the cost of their Swedish competitors.

While Stockholmers with toothaches are flocking to “City Dental”, which opened earlier this month in the heart of the capital and is staffed entirely by Polish dentists, not everyone is happy.

Read it all.

Hard to keep capitalism down…….

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Polish dentists Swedish teeth

1,500 queue for cheap dental care

Please Vote for FullosseousFlap at the 2005 Weblog Awards.

The Yorkshire Post Today has New deal fails to stop dentists quitting NHS

Half of dentists will quit the NHS and many others will reduce their health service commitment amid anger about the new contract which comes into force in April, a poll of practitioners has found. Ministers hope the contract will revitalise NHS dentistry by moving practitioners off the “treadmill” of existing NHS care in what is being billed by many as a “last chance” to save health service dentistry.
But the survey of 270 dentists carried out by Skipton dentist Andy Bates found that 50 per cent would quit the NHS unless there were substantial improvements in the draft contract currently on offer. A further 31 per cent would drastically reduce their NHS commitment. Only nine per cent said they would stay as they were and just three per cent said they would build on their practice using the new system.

Flap handicaps a NHS Dentistry collpase unless the Labour government of Tony Blair dramatically infuses money into the public socialized system.

If the new NHS contract fails to appease the practicing dentists (even with its guarantee of a substantial income) dentistry will FINALLY go ALL private.

The British would be wise to take this step forward rather than heavily subsidize an inefficient and inequitable system.

Related: NHS Dentistry Watch: More Dentists Now, More Dentists Later

Technorati Tags: dentistry, dentist, dental, NHS, National Health Service

Medical News today has More Dentists Now, More Dentists Later Key Targets Hit In Drive To Increase NHS Dentistry Access, UK.

There are more NHS dentists now and will be in the future thanks to a successful recruitment campaign bringing dentists to the NHS to improve access, and an increase in the number of students able to train as dentists, said Health Minister Rosie Winterton today.

Speaking at the Institute of Dentistry at Queen Mary, University of London, as she met new dental students, Rosie Winterton confirmed that the Government has far exceeded its target to recruit the whole time equivalent of 1000 more dentists and has also seen the largest increase in the number of dental training places in nearly 20 years.

It is apparent the Labour government of Tony Blair has spared no expense to sustain the socialized National Health Service Dentistry.

The government is lowering standards for licensure and has recruited over 500 foreign dentists, including 216 from Poland. Interesting that private dentists are taxed to pay the government to recruit and license competition to treat their own countrymen. If Flap were a taxpaying dentist and the government exacted my hard earned money to set up a competitor across the street because I would not accept low government fees for their socialized national scheme it would precipitate political outrage and probably emigration.

The terms of the future contract for dentists (to appear in April 2006) gurantees an income, 5%work reduction and a government pension among other advantages like NHS paid continuing education. Uusally, when something sounds too good to be true then it is not true.

What Flap asks is at what cost?

Wonder what the British Dental Association has to say?

Stay tuned…..

Technorati Tags: dentistry, dentist, dental, NHS, National Health Service

Sveriges Radio International has Dental Care Too Expensive.

A new study reveals that half of low income earners here can’t afford to go to the dentist.

Conducted by Statistics Sweden for the Swedish Public Health Institute, the survey indicates that the risk of poor dental health is six times higher among low income earners, and 30 percent more than last year can’t afford needed care.

Dental care is not included in Sweden’s National Health Service.

Last month the newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported that common dental surgery can cost six times as much here as in some neighboring countries.

Flap is bewildered after doing some research into Swedish dentistry.

Here is a piece entitled Dentistry in Sweden which details a highly socialized system of dental healthcare – with wide participation by the government of Sweden. For example, the government provides free dental care for all children until the age of 19 through general taxation.

Stay tuned.

Update #1

The Local has Poor Swedes priced out of dentistry.

Many Swedes on low incomes are suffering from poor dental health because they cannot afford to go to the dentist, according to a new report commissioned by the Swedish National Institute of Public Health, which calls for increased state subsidies for dental treatment.

The reports authors call for increased state subsidies for dental check-ups. The National Insurance Administration currently pays 21 percent of the cost for a normal check-up, while the patient pays for the rest.

The report says that people with financial difficulties would be better able to afford dentistry if this subsidy was raised by a few percent.

And the poor folks in the UK cannot find a dentist to take them.

Good grief…..

Technorati Tags: dentistry, dentist, dental

ABC Money.uk.oc has Dentists reject £295 million Scottish Executive deal.

Scottish dentists have resoundingly rejected the £295 million package proposed by the Executive to lure them back onto the NHS. Talks between the government and dentists have ended in stalemate with both sides sticking to their respective stands.

The Executive had proposed the Dental Action Plan, which required dentists to pledge that they would treat a fixed number of patients on the NHS. The British Dental Association (BDA) was unhappy with this clause and decided to withdraw from the talks. The dental crisis on the NHS has only deepened after this latest twist. Already thousands of patients have been forced to re-register with private dentists after their NHS dentists shut their practices down.

It is not the end of the world for British dental patients who can see dentists privately.

But, Flap bets the folks there are asking for a tax refund or rebate for the millions of pounds they paid the government for their socialized healthcare system which cannot deliver dental services.

“The Executive is putting Scotland’s dental health in jeopardy by removing the ability for dentists to see only children or those exempt from NHS charges. The levels of funding and investment available for NHS dentistry in Scotland are not sufficient to provide for a universal, comprehensive service for all,” said Andrew Lamb, the BDA director for Scotland.

The deputy health minister Lewis McDonald had launched the DAP in March this year and promised to recruit an extra 200 dentists by 2008. He was disappointed that any agreement had not been reached, “It is disappointing we haven’t been able to reach agreement with them, but our priority now is to deliver our action plan for NHS dentists,” he said. Shona Robison MSP, the SNP’s health spokeswoman echoed his views, but said that the Executive should ensure that there was adequate time to treat the patients.

Margaret Davidson, from the Scotland Patients’ Association, said, “The BDA is putting people’s lives at risk. Dental check-ups are vital for spotting serious health conditions, such as mouth cancer, and everyone should have the right to see a dentist.”

Right to see a dentist? Perhaps.

But, Flap thinks she means right to see a dentist at NO cost.

Hardly.

Technorati Tags: dentistry, dentist, dental, NHS, National Health Service

The Daily Mail has NHS dentistry ‘may collapse’

Britain is moving to the point where there will be an absolute collapse of National Health Service dentistry, shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley has claimed.

But his claims on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One programme were dismissed later in the programme by junior health minister Lord Warner as “nonsense”.

Mr Lansley, questioned about the Government’s new deal for dentists, to be introduced next April, said: “We have got more than half of our population not registered with an NHS dentist and a significant number of people not seeing a dentist regularly at all.”

So, it might be time for the Labour Government of Tony Blair to begin privitization of U.K dentistry.

Canada, South Africa and Australia – all members of the Commonwealth – have private dentistry with safety net programs (except South Africa) for the poor, elderly and disabled.

He said that at the general election, the Tories were proposing renegotiating the contracts with dentists which would have ensured registration between patients and dentists and a capitation fee. The benefit of that, he claimed, would have been a direct incentive for dentists to promote good oral health.

Mr Lansley said: “It is scandalous that Mr Blair said in 1999 that everybody would have access to an NHS dentist by 2001. Well, frankly, we are moving to the point where there will be virtually an absolute collapse of NHS dentistry.”

The Tories are wrong with a capitation type program but NOT wrong about the collapse of the socialized NHS.

The Labour Government should not postpone the inevitable and immmediately begin the weening of the U.K public off of the public dental trough of the NHS.

Technorati Tags: dentistry, dentist, dental, NHS, National Health Service

The BBC has NHS dentists ‘disaster’ warning.

Liberal Democrat health spokesman Steve Webb has warned NHS dentistry services are “on the brink of disaster”.

He said many dentists were threatening to quit the NHS because of new contracts which pay on the basis of the number of treatments performed.

Mr Webb said less than half of people in England were currently registered with an NHS dentist and predicted the contracts would see that figure fall.

The Lib Dems are due to debate the issue at their conference in Blackpool.

Mr Webb will be speaking for a motion calling for action to encourage dentists to register more NHS patients.

What a Joke!

How about the government getting out of the dentistry business entirely.

The U.K. should privitize their dentistry but provide vouchers for the poor, disabled and truely needy.

How simple is that?

Technorati Tags: dentistry, dentist, dental, NHS, National Health Service