COMPLAINTS AGAINST dentists by patients increased by 47 per cent last year.
New figures published by the Dental Council show it received 102 complaints about dentists last year, up from 69 in 2009.
The council said many of the complaints were in relation to consumer issues such as pricing and perceived overcharging. However its role is only to conduct inquiries into serious issues such as allegations of professional misconduct.
Asked to account for the jump in complaints in 2010, David O’Flynn, registrar of the council, said the reason was not yet clear but it may have been a one-off spike, as so far this year there had been only about 20 complaints lodged.
“Generally speaking the vast majority of complaints we receive would boil down to communication issues between the patient and dentist such as charging more than expected, receiving treatment that wasn’t expected or in relation to how the patient and dentist interacted,” he said.
The numbers of complaints which end up before fitness to practise inquiries, he said, was low because of the nature of the complaints coming in. “They are more consumer issues than professional conduct issues,” he said, adding there is a gap at the moment in terms of how these are dealt with. There was scope for some sort of complaints or dispute resolution process or mediation process to be put in place for dealing with more minor complaints, he said.
There were two fitness to practise inquiries held by the Dental Council in both 2009 and 2010 and five are pending in 2011.
Over the five years from 2005 to 2010 two dentists were struck off the register after being found guilty of professional misconduct. A third dentist was suspended from the register, two dentists had conditions attached to the retention of their names on the register and another was censured. This is out of a total of more than 2,600 dentists on the register.
Up to now the Dental Council hasn’t published findings of fitness to practise inquiries. They are are held in private but new legislation to change that has been promised and may be published next year.
Mr O’Flynn said he would like to see the new Dentists Act regulate practices as well as dentists themselves. At present there is no register of dental practices and the Dental Council does not have the power to inspect them.
Fintan Hourihan, chief executive of the Irish Dental Association (IDA), said the number of complaints made about dentists to the Dental Council was very small in the context of them engaging in up to a million patient consultations every year.
But he said the IDA had recognised for some time the need for an alternative dispute resolution process for patients and dentists and it has been in discussions with the Medical Protection Society, which indemnifies dentists, about this since last year. He said he expects this to lead to the establishment of an independent dental complaints resolution system later this year.
Meanwhile, it will be mandatory under a new code of practice for all dentists to display their fees from the beginning of June in a place where patients can view them before a consultation.