THE FOUR principal dental surgeons working for the Health Service Executive (HSE) have said the cutbacks to the medical card dental scheme which came into effect last week gave rise to “significant governance, management and operational risk issues”.
In a letter to each regional director of operations in the HSE, they say while they were asked to draw up proposals to limit spending after it was announced in December’s budget that funding for it had been cut in 2010, these were then ignored.
The dental surgeons – Dr Joe Green (HSE West), Dr Mary O’Connor (HSE South), Dr Barney Murphy (HSE Dublin Mid-Leinster) and Dr Anne O’Neill (HSE Dublin North East) – say the lack of a lead-in time for the changes, which came into effect last week, meant patients who might already have made appointments will now turn up to be told they have no entitlement to treatment. They also say no advice had been given on what to do about treatments in progress.
The release of the circular had “caused confusion amongst HSE staff, contractors and the public. It has done nothing to enhance the reputation of the HSE as a well-managed organisation”, they wrote. The letter was obtained by Fine Gael’s health spokesman Dr James Reilly. “It was always going to be extremely difficult to meet the budget decision to reduce the Dental Treatment Services Scheme funding to 2008 levels considering the increase in medical card holders. However, the HSE has once again succeeded in making everything worse,” he said.
Spending under the scheme had been capped at €63 million this year, down from €87 million last year. The circular said the HSE would provide emergency dental care to eligible patients “with a focus on relief of pain and sepsis [blood poisoning]” and additional care would be considered in “exceptional or high-risk cases”.
Medical card patients would be entitled to a yearly examination and a maximum of two fillings, unless there were “emergency circumstances”, it added.