Time for NI authorities to show commitment to NHS dentistry

A delegation from the BDA’s Northern Ireland Dental Practice Committee met on December 3 with representatives from Department of Health, Health and Social Care Board and the Business Services Organisation. The substantive issue on the agenda was the future sustainability of Health Service dentistry in Northern Ireland, at the request of BDA.

A comprehensive BDA NI paper has been compiled and shared with the Department that evidences just how much pressure GDPs are under after approaching a decade of cuts, wholly inadequate pay uplifts and rapidly rising expenses in delivering Health Service dentistry. Pay is down an estimated 38 per cent in real terms; morale is at rock bottom, with 68 per cent of practice owners and 52 per cent of associates having ‘low’ or ‘very low’ morale. We cannot continue to go on at the current trajectory.

Cuts imposed by the Department of Health, for example the removal of Commitment payments alone has taken £3m a year out of dentists’ income, not to mention the damaging signal this has sent to the profession at large. The landscape has changed rapidly since then, from GDS overspend to year-on-year underspend expected to exceed £7m this year. There ought to be significant bandwidth to address the crisis that is building within GDS.