Responding to a GDC consultation on proposals to charge dentists £890 and dental care professionals £116 to retain their registration with the regulator throughout 2016, FGDP said it could not support the sustenance of this year’s ‘extraordinarily high’ ARF – which had risen 55 per cent on the previous year – into next year.
Explaining its position, FGDP cited the GDC’s poor performance, the ARF being significantly higher than for similar health professions, and the lack of explanation by the GDC of the doubling of its caseload over a period in which the Care Quality Commission found dentists provided safe, good quality care with a lower risk to patient safety than other sectors.
The Faculty also rejected the GDC’s plans to use the ARF to build up further financial reserves, suggested the GDC is attempting to establish the current ARF as a ‘baseline’, and said the GDC could cut costs by promoting resolution of complaints at the practice level.
While it welcomed the publication of more detailed financial information underpinning the GDC’s proposals, FGDP also called for the GDC to publish information on the proportionate number of cases brought against dental professionals, and ARFs or equivalents paid, in comparable countries, as well as information on how the GDC’s proposed new Fitness to Practise processes will compare to those of the UK’s other healthcare regulators.
FGDP(UK) Dean, Mick Horton, said:
“The ARF is a symptom of the GDC’s unsatisfactory and overloaded Fitness to Practice process. It is incredible that in a sector which the CQC says provides safe, good quality care and presents a low risk to patients, seemingly one in thirteen dentists each year now face a complaint which the GDC considers might call into question their continuing fitness to practise. The Faculty’s primary concern is the safe and effective treatment of patients, and in the end it is patients who will suffer from the fact that the GDC has lost the confidence of dentists and is creating disillusionment and fear within the profession.
“In proposing an ARF over twice that paid by doctors, three times that of opticians and pharmacists and seven times that of nurses, the GDC is placing the financial burden of its own failings on to the shoulders of dentists and dental care professionals, and we cannot support it until it puts its house in order.”