As we all know, a final figure factoring in dentists’ expenses, is still to come. The new Government must not follow in its predecessor’s footsteps by cherry picking measures of inflation that will likely fail to reflect soaring overheads and leave frontline dentists facing real pay cuts.
Additional costs brought by the recent rise in National Insurance contributions and the National Living Wage, have increased dental practices' wage bills by 9.5%. Even before these costs hit, a typical practice was losing over £40 delivering a set of NHS dentures, and over £7 on a simple new patient exam.
Earlier this year we warned the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that the Treasury has become reliant on practices delivering care at a loss. This has fed into a decade of austerity funding, which has fuelled the workforce and access crises in the service. The PAC stressed promised reform of the discredited contract dentists work to must go hand in hand with sustainable funding.
While the Department of Health and Social Care has a cost-of-service exercise underway, with our support, there is no sense if the Treasury will plug the funding gap to keep NHS practices afloat longer term, or how this data will inform future pay awards.
The Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration deserves credit for refusing to be constrained to by the Government’s budgeted uplift of 2.8%. But clearly the final uplift, when confirmed, will not even begin to undo the real terms collapse of over 40% in NHS dentists pay since 2010, a fall with no precedent in the UK public sector.
Employed dentists will see a 4% uplift, with an additional £750 on pay scales for resident dentists working in hospitals.
“On paper dentists are being offered an uplift of 4%,” says General Dental Practice Committee Chair Shiv Pabary.
“The reality is they won’t see anything like this, unless ministers cover the mounting cost of care.
“Without real change, practices will remain stuck delivering NHS work at a loss and the exodus from this service will continue.”