North Wales MS Mark Isherwood has criticised the Welsh Health Minister for his continuing refusal to recognise and address the plight facing independently operated Dental Practices across Wales amid the Covid-19 pandemic, despite General Dental Practice in Wales being almost exclusively delivered by them.
Having raised the British Association of Private Dentistry (BAPD) (Wales) ‘Welsh Dentistry in Crisis’ campaign during two virtual Plenary Meetings of the Welsh Parliament this month, Mr Isherwood was concerned to receive a written response from the Health Minister, Vaughan Gething MS, this week which was then challenged by Dental Practitioners.
In his response, the Minister states:
“Unlike in England, throughout this pandemic, dentists in Wales have been ‘open’ and able to see patients face to face in their practices when necessary for urgent care. To reduce the risk of spreading the virus we asked dentists to stop routine activity for the time being.
“However, dentists have continued to triage patients and provide advice remotely. If a patient has a severe urgent problem that cannot be managed remotely, then the practice can carry out a face to face consultation on patients although any treatment would be restricted to a non-aerosol generating procedure.
“Urgent Dental Centres have been set up to see patients with an emergency or urgent dental need where treatment cannot be delayed.”
However, BAPD Wales members refuted this after Mr. Isherwood referred Mr. Gething’s letter to them, stating:
“We could not remain open as we had to furlough our staff as did all other private practices as we have received no funding unlike the NHS practices plus we were told that we could not provide any treatment and we had an email to that effect at the outset.
“Even if we had been allowed to stay open and carry on paying our employees we couldn’t in the absence of being allowed to do any fee generating work.
“The Urgent Dental Centre he refers to has been very difficult for patients to get into and in the case of one of my patients it was refused.
“They can try to smooth things over as much as they want but it has been a nightmare.”
They also copied Mr. Isherwood on the 24th March e-mail they had received from Healthcare Inspectorate Wales which advised them to cease providing dental services immediately and warned “Should you continue to provide services we would consider this to be a potential breach of regulations”.
Mr Isherwood said:
“There seems to a blatant disregard by this Health Minister for both Dentists whose livelihoods are at risk and the immense backlog of patients needing treatment.
“His response totally contradicts that of BAPD Wales members, who emphasise that they would never put the safety of their employees, their patients, themselves and their families second to maintaining the financial viability of their Dental Practices, and that a tidal wave of dental disease is about to crash, yet private dentistry in Wales has been left in a ‘precarious’ financial situation.
“General Dental Practice in Wales, and the rest of the UK, is delivered almost exclusively (85%) by independently owned and operated dental practices, regardless of whether they provide NHS funded dentistry, private dentistry, or a mixture. If they are unable to carry out the income generating work that their counterparts in England are now permitted to do, then quite simply their practices will not survive.
“The Health Minister needs to recognise this and allow them re-open, provided strict criteria have been met, before it is too late.”