Increasingly impoverished Greeks are reportedly either deferring dental care, or looking further afield for low cost treatment. Health tourism is a phenomenon encountered everywhere. A growing number of Greek dental patients are now visiting the nearby Balkan states to the north in order to save money on treatment.
With many Greeks having had their wages cut, or even finding themselves with no income at all, dental care has become an unaffordable luxury for some. That reduction in patient demand has in turn reduced the incomes of dentists.
According to Athanasios Devliotis of the Thessalonika Dental Association, the drop in the amount of work for dentists has been significant in both urban and rural areas of Greece. Dentists offering prosthetic services have seen the biggest decline, with some reporting that their workload, and income, has fallen by 80 per cent.
Many Greek social security funds have stopped covering dental care following their incorporation into the National Organisation for Healthcare Services. As for Government funding of health care, the most recent Greek austerity package hit the Greek health sector with further cuts to the health system. Savings of €2bn have meant one in 10 hospital doctors and other medical staff have lost their jobs.
According to the aid organisation Doctors Without Borders, the funding of public hospitals in Greece has plummeted by 40 per cent since the financial crash of 2008. Serious problems have arisen because health service suppliers are not being paid on time. In some cases, vital operations cannot be carried out because unless they are paid up-front suppliers refuse to provide the necessary medicines and/or equipment.
Many private clinics, hospitals and dental surgeries have closed; others are struggling to stay afloat. In the meantime a professional exodus continues unabated.
Inevitably some dentists, especially young ones, have been seeking work outside Greece.
The number of Greek dentists moving abroad is growing all the time, with hundreds leaving the country each year. The most popular destination is said to be Britain, followed by Germany and Italy. Others have left for the Middle East and North Africa.
However it’s not just Greek dentists who are said to be on the move, seeking greener and more prosperous pastures to practice their profession. Since the 1950s the NHS has of course been a magnet for doctors and nurses trained elsewhere, particularly in India, Pakistan, South Africa and Nigeria, among other countries. The most recent statistics from the General Medical Council show that 30 per cent of all doctors and 10 per cent of all nurses working in the UK qualified abroad.
Dentists from the Old Commonwealth have however, with the notable exception of Australia, historically been relatively rare creatures in the UK. Today registration with the GDC for dentists who have qualified outside the European Economic Area (EEA) is not straightforward.
By contrast dentists from the EEA with a primary qualification specified in the relevant EC Directive are able to register with the General Dental Council and practise in the UK on the basis of that qualification. All dentists who qualified outside the UK but within the EEA need only confirm the status of their registration and the documentation required for registration with the GDC before they travel to the UK. But exactly how true is the well reported exodus from Greece, and indeed from other newly impoverished EU countries?
In 2012, there were 39,894 dentists registered with the GDC. Of that number 28,664 (71.85 per cent) qualified in the UK compared to 6,821 (17.10 per cent) who had qualified in the EEA. The UK overseas registration exam accounted for 2,453 (6.15 per cent) and ‘Overseas qualified’ a further 1,956 (4.90 per cent).
By contrast in 2007, the year before the financial crash there were just 35,428 dentists registered with the GDC. Of those 26,521 (75 per cent) were UK qualified; 5,053 (14.2 per cent) were EEA qualified, whilst the ‘UK overseas registration exam’ accounted for 1,544 (4.3 per cent) and ‘Overseas qualified’ for further 2,310 (6.5 per cent).
On the face of it one might conclude that the proportion of UK trained dentists was significantly declining, whilst the number from the EEA and elsewhere were indeed rapidly increasing. Surprisingly, the breakdown for new registrations reveals a more complex story.
Back in 2007 there were 2,363 new GDC registrations. Of those 971 (41 per cent) qualified in the UK; 1,012 (42 per cent) were EEA qualified.
The UK Overseas registration exam accounted for 267 (11.3 per cent) and ‘Overseas qualified’ for just 113 (4.8 per cent).
By 2012, the last year details have been published, the situation was quite different, despite the financial problems in Greece and throughout the Eurozone. Of 2,232 newly registered dentists 1,320 (59.14 per cent) had qualified in the UK. The numbers of new EEA qualified dentist had fallen to 769 (34.4 per cent), whilst only 96 (4.30 per cent)
registered as qualifying under the ‘UK Overseas registration exam’ category, and a mere 47 (2.11 per cent) registered as ‘Overseas qualified’.
What should one make of the statistics? An obvious conclusion is that an increase in the number of places at UK dental schools is now bearing fruit – though still far below the numbers apparently needed to meet demand. The second observation is that any large influx of dentists from Europe appears to have already peaked and thus effectively be over. Those get up and go young dentists from Greece have already got up and gone.
Expansion of the EU and the EEA may of course continue, as might economic decline in parts of the Eurozone. Unless restrictions on economic migration within the EU are toughened up at some time in the future then the UK will continue to be able to draw on a European-wide dental labour force to ‘top up’ any shortfall. Whether that is a good thing or not is for politicians to decide. Most people would however surely be quite surprised to know that despite recent increases in the number of dental students that almost 40 per cent of newly registered dentists qualified abroad. As for those impoverished dentists who remain in Greece; now with fewer colleagues to compete
with, their incomes should now at least be stabilising.