Northern Ireland cost of service review announced
Study set to examine practice cost to provide care.
A study to review the true cost to practices of providing health service dentistry in the General Dental Services (GDS) has been announced.
The Department of Health (DoH) has confirmed that Ciaran O’Neill, Professor of Health Economics at the Centre for Public Health, 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.
Representatives of the British Dental Association (BDA) will be meeting Professor O’Neill to discuss considerations for the methodology to be used in the review. The BDA has also written to the 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 of Health 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 committed to commissioning a review to be completed next year, which he 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”.
