Rising near you ? - Dr Warburton bakes up a draft dental access contract

Several PCT's across the country including the north east, Lincolnshire and Devon appear to have already released a version of the draft contract developed by the dental access team at the Department of Health, led by Dr Mike Warburton,as part of their tendering proces for new services with practitioners .

The best advice at present has to be not to sign such contract but to take advice from the BDA Business Team along with that of your lawyer.

According to Barry Cockcroft the access team asked the NHS to share the draft with stakeholders 'in order to get feedback but also to point out that the version they have at the moment is not the final version'. Though he added 'We intend to robustly pilot potential changes with existing providers'.

Dr John Milne, chair of the BDA's General Dental Practice Committee, has made it clear that the version that they have seen is, in the opinion of the BDA, not fit for purpose and they are warning members not to sign it in its current form.

Whilst the Dental Access Programme is intended to ensure that both additional new patients are seen and quality is maintained it also includes provision within the procurement for extended hours. It is understood to also enable the PCT to effectively micro manage a practice - from opening hours to the recall intervals for patients.

The anxiety overall is that this will lead to the measure of dental performance becoming a mix of quality, access and UDA measurements. This new focus does not sit well with the demands of UDAs at present upon dentists nor does it appear to retain significant dentist discretion.

Rumours also circulate that the new draft contract will cement the complete withdrawl by the PCT of a dentists ownership of the goodwill of their practice and also contains no immediate right to continue a contract once the indicated five year term comes to an end, whatever success may have been achieved.

It would appear that for some the upheavals of 2006 are just about to be re-visited.

I would be delighted to hear from any practitioners with their experiences of a draft dental access contract and also the approaches from or dealings with their PCTs regarding the new draft contracts.