Are Dentists Greedy? What Everybody Thinks About It
The consumer magazine which has published findings from a study that has shown failings in the NHS dental care. Dentists are responsible for keeping their on line details and prices up to date, but there are also some systemic problems. Each year dentists get a fixed budget to work to and that amount cannot be transferred between locations or used where patient variations create a greater demand.
Which highlights a variety of results that are not ideal, including the up selling of private treatment and the inability by dentists to manage their NHS Choices availability.
The press were quick to trot out tired headlines like ‘You are being ripped off by your greedy dentist.’ But this type of emotive headlining misses the wider picture. As a Private dentist in Catford, we are as well aware as anyone that the budget allocated to dentistry by the NHS is fixed and shrinking and does not cover the needs of all the population.
So What Do Our Patients Think?
This kind of press is likely to give many people the feeling that they are not being looked after properly. And if people think like that then they will trust their dentist less. Currently some 30 million people (Yes, that is half the population!) don’t see a dentist regularly at all! Reading this kind of headline, how would this kind of patient be encouraged to come to practises like our Hillview Dental Centre?
What Do Dentists Think?
NHS dentists are forced to work tirelessly in a system that is broken, a system that they have had forced on them for nearly 10 years. Some dentists treat as many as 50 patients per day, with no real representative to speak for them. On a local level they manage the demand for dental services but even if they want to increase their NHS patient services are unable to do so because of contractual constraints.
Typically dentists will have experienced an 800% rise in the cost of complying while NHS funding has barely increased at all.
What Does the Government Think?
Evidence from recent years appears to show that the governments know that NHS dental treatment access is a vote winner. However no government want to take the blame for the shortfall in what is offered in the way of NHS dental treatment nowadays nor would they want to accept that there is just not enough money to provide an adequate service.
The truth about the Future of NHS Dentistry and The Big Lie
The plain truth is that there just is not enough in the NHS dental pot for everyone to have NHS dental treatment. Part of this is the fact that the budget for NHS dental care is shrinking by stealth. Every time a dentist misses his or her target for the year his NHS budget for the next year will be reduced. It would seem clear that NHS dental treatment is a very low priority and pinning the blame on the “greedy dentist”. The real situation is that dentists have to juggle with NHS and private dental offering to stretch their budget as far as they can.
It looks like a slippery slope for NHS dentistry where it is a low budget priority. The “greedy” dentist is taking all the flack. What happens in the real world is dentists mixing NHS and private dental care to make the budget go further. This is a complex system, some say made deliberately so, leading to customer confusion
Still think dentists are greedy? It is always best to try and read behind the headlines to understand the real truth of the matter.
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