Dentists leaving government scheme in their droves, figures show

Dentists say they have been incurring extra costs since the pandemic began, as they have to take extra precautions and cannot see as many patients.

Dentists are leaving a Government-funded scheme in their droves as they struggle to cope in the midst of the pandemic, new figures show.

More than 260 dentists have dropped out of the scheme, that provides dental services to medical card holders, since the start of this year.

The exodus means about 200,000 medical card holders are now facing delays for treatment.

The number of private dentists participating in the Dental Treatment Services Scheme (DTSS) has dropped by 16%, from 1,654 to 1,393 over the past 10 months.

It means one in six dentists who had a contract to provide services has resigned from it.

Irish Dental Association (IDA) chief executive Fintan Hourihan said the organisation has warned the Government there is a "crisis looming large" over the matter.

"In the last 10 months alone there has been an extremely rapid decline in the number of dentists in the scheme," Mr Hourihan said.

"Either we sit down and talk about a managed transition to a new arrangement or you wait for complete chaos. You would like to think they [the Government] would go for orderly transition but, big surprise, there is nothing happening."

The IDA has held meetings with officials in the Department of Health in the past fortnight to raise its concerns.

"I've warned them in the strongest terms that unless there is priority given to this, this is going to be a serious problem that is going to be very hard to manage," he said.

He added that dentists were incurring considerable extra costs since the pandemic began because they have to take extra precautions and cannot see as many patients.

"It has left them in a position where they cannot afford to continue running the scheme," he said.

The Government pays a fee for every patient a private dentist treats, but dentists argue the scheme, which was first introduced in 1994, is outdated and fails to cover the costs of treating patients.

"A new approach is needed," Mr Hourihan said. 

"The objective everyone has is to improve access for people who can't otherwise afford access but simply replacing the current system and contract with something slightly different is not going to deal with the underlying problem.

"The underlying objective should be to make access affordable to people and that requires a whole new approach.

"Over the course of this year, there are about 200,000 people who are no longer seeing their dentists as medical card patients. So they're either seeing the same dentist as a private patient and having to pay full price or they've gone to the HSE to find another dentist."