Trade or profession?

L

ast month marked the anniversary of the publication of the controversial final report of the Office of Fair Trading into the ‘market’ of dentistry. Whilst the conclusions did not result in a referral to the competition commission, much of the content of the report was critically received by the profession. Satisfaction with dentists was shown by the OFT to be high and a further survey undertaken by the British Dental Trade Association during the same period indicated that trust of dentists was higher than trust in doctors.

One of the fundamental issues that arose was the way in which the report treated dentistry as though the provision of dental services was the purchase of a commodity. The report was triggered by the number of complaints received by Consumer Direct (a body most of us had not heard of prior to the report). In fact Consumer Direct receives more complaints about handbags than dentists but there is no sign of them wanting to investigate the handbag market.