Almost 68,000 local medical card holders will be denied routine dental treatments, including fillings and extractions as well as dentures and treatment of gum disease, due to HSE cuts, according to the Irish Dental Association.
Denouncing what it terms the health authority’s decision to dismantle the medical card dental scheme and reduce it to one which only provides limited emergency cover for card holders the association says the move is “unsafe” and “unworkable”.
In a circular to dentists the HSE said it would only provide emergency dental care to eligible patients with a focus on relief of pain and sepsis. It said additional care would only be considered in exceptional or high risk cases.
Knocknacarra dentist Dr Peter Gannon says dentists did not accept the legitimacy of the circular which he said formalised the creation of a two tier system between private and public patients.
He is calling on the Minister for Health Mary Harney to direct the HSE to recall the letter and to engage with the IDA immediately.
“In March we warned that the 30 per cent cuts in HSE funding would lead to nearly half a million less treatments for medical card holders. What we didn’t know then was how the HSE would ration the available number of treatments. Now we do. They have basically decided to rip the scheme asunder and turn an open, cost efficient system into an extremely limited one which will only cater for people in certain emergency situations. IDA members are being asked to provide inadequate and inappropriate treatments for patients and it just won’t work.”
His association describes the move as “unethical”. It claims it will hit the most vulnerable in society the hardest, causing them unnecessary pain and suffering as well as setting back the dental health of the nation by decades.
The dental association also says the cuts do not make any financial sense as every case of delayed treatment requires “hugely expensive treatment” in future years. The latest cutbacks will rank high on the agenda of the annual conference of the IDA which kicks off in Galway today (Thursday ) and runs until Saturday.
According to the IDA there has been an increase of 138,000 medical card holders nationally in the last two years while this year 144,000 more people will join the scheme. It believes it is “grossly irresponsible” of the HSE to cut spending back to 2008 levels with hundreds of thousands more people now holding medical cards and argues that spending should be increased by €30m to €100m to cope with the increased demands on the system.
Previously the association called on the Health Minister and the HSE to examine alternative means of limiting the impact of these cuts. These include agreeing supplementary funding, using the National Treatment Purchase Fund [a Government initiative designed to cut waiting lists by offering public patients treatment in private facilities] and prioritising spending on the medical card scheme within the wider dental budget.
