The British Dental Association (BDA) calls on the Department of Health to urgently address shortcomings in the new dental contract.

The inadequacies and flaws in the current method of monitoring the dental contract were stressed at a meeting between the BDA and Chief Dental Officer for England, Dr Barry Cockcroft.

In a letter to Dr Cockcroft following last week's meeting, Lester Ellman, Chair of the BDA's General Dental Practice Committee, writes:

"We are still firmly of the opinion that Units of Dental Activity are fundamentally unfit for purpose??¦It is our view that the longer these iniquitous and inappropriate units are in place, the more damage will be done."

Dr Ellman is calling for the Department of Health to remove UDAs as the only performance requirement stipulated in the contract regulations. His letter urges Dr Cockcroft to explore alternative performance measures through the evaluation of the completed Personal Dental Services pilots and also by piloting different contract monitoring methods. A more wide-ranging review of the lessons learned from the PDS pilots is also being called for by the BDA.

At the meeting, Dr Ellman reiterated the significant concerns raised by dentists and patients reported at the special BDA conference to mark the first anniversary of the new contract.

The BDA is pursuing with the Department the issue of business continuity and the importance this has on continuity of care for patients. The Department has been informed that dentists need to have greater certainty about their future contract arrangements, including contract value.

Concerns over the collection of patient charge revenue have also been raised, and Dr Ellman's letter calls for the Department to monitor the situation closely, to ensure money allocated for primary dental services is not used to fund any shortfalls in patient charge revenue.

"We are keeping the pressure on the Department of Health so that it fully understands the problems with the new system and takes urgent steps to tackle the serious issues we're raising," said Dr Ellman.

The British Dental Association (BDA) is the professional association for dentists in the UK. It represents over 20,000 dentists working in general practice, in community and hospital settings, in academia and research, and in the armed forces.

British Dental Association