A study to review the true cost to practices of providing Health Service dentistry in the General Dental Services (GDS) is set to get underway imminently.
The Department of Health (DoH) have confirmed Professor Ciaran O’Neill, Professor of Health Economics within the Centre for Public Health in Queen’s University Belfast has been appointed to carry out the review.
The main objective of the review will be to identify the cost per hour of running a dental chair to deliver Health Service treatment within a dental surgery in a majority Health Service dental practice in Northern Ireland.
Our representatives will be meeting with Professor O’Neill in the coming days to discuss considerations for the methodology to be used to inform this review. We have also responded to DoH to emphasise the importance of factoring in all business-related costs incurred by practices to provide Health Service dentistry.
A Cost-of Service-Review was approved by the Minister earlier this year. It follows repeated calls to have fees rebased according to the true cost to provide care to make Health Service dentistry financially viable.
The Minister has committed to commissioning a Cost-of-Service Review to be completed in 2025-26, which he has said, “will provide the information necessary to inform the future of GDS in Northern Ireland”. He has told the Stormont Health Committee that this study “will satisfy the BDA’s recent request for an informed GDS fee rebasing exercise”.