The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has launched a consultation to reduce its fees dental surgeries pay by 13.5%.
The regulator oversees health and social care in England, including more than 10,000 dental practices, and since the government withdrew funding, it has moved to setting fees on a full cost recovery basis, meaning dental practice fees would drop.
‘Only last week, the CQC’s annual report demonstrated once again that dentists provide safer care than any other health profession, and it is welcome and well deserved that this will now be reflected in a decrease in the fees dentists pay,’ FGDP(UK) dean, Dr Mick Horton, said.
‘Dentists are also the only sector whose fees cover their CQC regulatory costs in full, and through their taxes dentists also subsidise the fees of other providers.
‘There is no justification for dentists being singled out in this way, and we welcome the proposal to move forward with a fairer fee structure that reflects the risk profiles of different provider types.’
Have your say
You can have your say on the CQC’s fees consultation by visiting www.cqc.org.uk/content/regulatory-fees-201718-consultation.
Since taking over the regulation of dental practices, the CQC deemed dental services lower risk and so reduced the number of practices it inspected each year to 10%, which it hopes will now help costs drop from £8.4m in 2016/17 to £7.3m in 2017/18.
