Patients Gain? Dentists’ Pain!

On Monday 16 November 2009, the Department of Health (the Department) launched the new model PDS+ Agreement for improving Dental access. Although it is in a significantly different form to the first draft of the Agreement presented by the Department four months ago, there are still many concerns.

The main concerns are that the Agreement is very prescriptive, one-sided (favouring the PCT) and requires robust management systems to be in place, to the extent that fulfilling the requirements may be difficult both for the big dental corporates and to a greater extent the small dental practice.

The new Agreement sees a shift from the standard GDS Contracts and PDS Agreements that dental contractors are familiar with, to more of a short-term contract based on the APMS model contract favoured by the Department for general practitioners.

No doubt PCTs will shortly commence procurement and contracting of the new Agreement and have, in some instances, already begun testing early model documentation.

If dentists are thinking about bidding we would suggest that they first read carefully the Agreement being tendered, the requirements being imposed, the viability of achieving the targets and whether any initial outlay can be recouped within the term of the Agreement.

Unfortunately, it is an unduly complex Agreement and before time and money is spent going through the tender process, it is advisable to seek the advice of specialist accountants and solicitors.

Lockharts Solicitors      

                                                                                                                              
Andrew is the Senior Partner of Lockharts Solicitors and leads in the Commercial Team