Medical card dental treatment abused by dentists

SOME dentists are taking decisions for financial gain and not a patient’s clinical need, a research project funded by the Health Research Board has found.

Health economist Dr Noel Woods said there were indications that a number of dentists were giving medical card patients more treatments than were necessary and costing the State €5 million a year.

He stressed he had not proven any irregularities among dental practices, but his research called for more transparency in the treatment given to medical card patients. “If your dental delivery system provides economic incentives to providers, with no probity checks, then you’re wide open for exploitation.”

The situation was compounded by the fact that patients knew little about dental procedures and there was the potential for their ignorance to be exploited.

Dr Woods’s work was among a raft of locally produced studies contained in the HRB’s 2006 edition of Picture of Health.

It detailed projects which accounted for €5 million spent by the HRB in the past three years out of its total current spending programme of €100m.

Acting HRB director Dr Mairead O’Driscoll said: “These projects are just the tip of the iceberg as the HRB currently funds research totalling about €100m throughout the island of Ireland. We’re actively working to position Ireland as a key international player in health research”

One project contained in the 2006 booklet looked at the psychological effects the symptoms of diabetes are likely to have and the clinical research on drugs to prevent clotting. Another carried out by researchers in Beaumont Hospital found that young transplant patients were 200 times more likely to develop skin cancer in later life then otherwise healthy people.

Each of the research topics is broken up into small booklets the HRB hopes will be picked up by people interested in the various conditions. It says this has the potential to inform patients what new research is out there and in some cases offer hope when drug and treatment developments are coming down the tracks.

HRB communications officer Gillian Markey said it made a special effort to present its annual account of research developments in a manner accessible to the general public.

The booklets are broken into categories covering diabetes, Motor Neurone Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, the price of health, heart disease and cancer.