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Private dentistry

24 May 2006

Following a recommendation in the OFT report, the Dental Complaints Service, an independent complaints service funded by the General Dental Council, is established to help resolve complaints for private dental patients.

3 July 2003

The OFT publishes guidance on choosing private treatment.

23 June 2003

The Government releases an action plan in response to the Office of Fair Trading investigation on the private dentistry market in the UK.

See Government action plan on the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform website.

See the General Dentistry Council (GDC) response to Government's action plan for private dentistry on the GDC website.

20 June 2003

See the British Dental Association's (BDA) response to OFT private dentistry inquiry on the BDA website.

26 March 2003

Better information on prices and treatments is required to improve competition and give consumers greater choice, an OFT study of the market for private dentistry concludes. The Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, and Health Departments announced that Government would now consider the report and its contents and recommendations and will publish a response. See the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform website.

The study also recommends better and more effective self-regulation of the market through improved monitoring and enforcement of professional standards and the implementation of comprehensive complaints procedures. Some unnecessary regulatory restrictions on the supply of dentistry services should also be lifted.

The UK market for private dentistry is expanding rapidly, growing by just under 50 per cent in real terms between 1997 and 2001. It is currently valued at over £1 billion. Around seven million people regularly receive private dental treatment.

The market for private dentistry is not working well for consumers in some key respects. In particular:

consumers often lack basic information on prices, quality of services and treatments available on the NHS that enable them to make informed choices about private dentistry
standards promoted in professional guidance published by the General Dental Council (GDC), the statutory regulatory body for dentistry, are not routinely monitored and enforced, and compliance in some areas is low
unlike the NHS, there is no universal complaints system, and procedures for dealing with complaints and securing redress for consumers are often inadequate
regulatory restrictions on the supply of dentistry services, limit consumer choice, competition, business freedom and the potential to develop and deliver better services.

The report set out a number of remedies to tackle these problems. These include improving consumer information through better self regulation and reducing restrictions on the supply of dentistry services. The OFT further recommends that each practice has a complaints procedure and that, in line with NHS procedures, an independent complaints procedure is established to examine complaints that cannot be resolved at practice level.

Along with the main report, the OFT has published reports of surveys carried out during the study.