The General Dental Council (GDC) has recently caused some considerable concern by making a statement along the lines that the British public should be checking that their dentists have insurance before receiving treatment. This has been met with a rather incredulous response from the public and many campaigning organisations who feel that it is the responsibility of the GDC, rather than the public at large, to make sure that the profession is properly insured to provide protection for those who are the victims of dental negligence.
The advice from the GDC has been distributed in the form of a leaflet, which sets out the issue of dental insurance and encourages members of the public to sit down and have a chat with their dentist before receiving treatment, to make sure there is insurance in place in case anything should go wrong. It is thought that the leaflets were an attempt to reassure the public about dental insurance – and the fact that it is not something the GDC insist that dentists need to practice in the UK – but unfortunately it seems to have had the opposite effect.
The Bridge the Gap campaign, which highlights loopholes in the law that could put dental patients at risk, has been quick to focus on the fact that in the UK a dentist does not need to have professional liability insurance to be able to practice. David Corless- Smith who is the head of the campaign felt that the GDC was not doing its job as a regulator in passing over to the public the responsibility for checking whether dentists are insured. He said: “The irony is even if the patient plucks up courage to ask a dentist about insurance, the dentist – under current UK law - can quite reasonably say I don’t have any formal arrangements, but I will make good any mistakes through my own means. He is allowed to do that by the GDC, but nobody checks whether he can or can’t until a claim is underway.”
The move has also been met with some surprise – and considerable discomfort – by those within the dental profession, many of whom feel that practice certificates should not be issued to dentists until there is evidence that there is insurance in place. Bridge The Gap has estimated that some 215,000 people have been put at risk by an uninsured dentist since 2005 and, as well as being a danger to the public health, those negligent dentists without insurance risk giving the profession a bad name. For those who have been affected by dental negligence, even where a dentist is insured there may often be ongoing issues, as it is usually simply left to the dentist to cooperate with the insurer to make sure that compensation is paid to the patient.
It is clear that the GDC might have got it slightly wrong on this particular issue and it will be interesting to see the effects of the European wide legislation on the same subject that is due to take effect next year. In the meantime, it seems that members of the public are to be left to make their own checks before opening their mouths, and to personally pursue dentists for compensation in the event of any negligent treatment.