Private dentists face fair trading inquiry

The dental profession faces investigation by the Office of Fair Trading into allegations that private patients are being exploited.

The investigation will also look at accusations that it has failed to handle properly complaints made against incompetent private dentists.

"It is an area we would like to look into," an OFT spokeswoman said yesterday. "It is early days but we would be investigating the pricing, transparency [of pricing] and accountability in the dental profession. No final decision has been made."

The threat of an OFT investigation follows lobbying by the Consumers' Association, which is compiling a dossier of patients badly treated by dentists. They will be highlighted in the coming months in the association's Which? magazine.

"We believe that there are many problems with which the NHS and private dental treatment are currently dogged," said a spokeswoman. "It is appalling that private work done by dentists is not properly regulated and that there is no independent complaints procedure."

While NHS dentists can be reported to the local health authority, private dentists do not answer to any similar independent health watchdog. Complaints instead must be made to the General Dental Council (GDC).

But Britain's 30,000 dentists can only face one charge at the hands of the GDC – serious professional misconduct – and that does not apply in most cases where treatment has gone wrong.

The OFT will want to look at how complaints are handled and how the system can be improved. The problem is compounded by the fact that up to two million people, according to some estimates, do not have access to an NHS dentist and are forced to go private.

The GDC says it wants to put new procedures in place but needs an amendment to the Dentists Act 1984 to do so.

The lack of redress is prompting increasing numbers of patients to go to court to seek compensation, or their money back, after shoddy treatment.

Dental negligence cases are now worth millions of pounds to lawyers. The field is so lucrative that two dentists have retrained as lawyers and set up their own firm dedicated to suing incompetent dentists. In the nine months, the practice has been running it has handled 400 cases.

The Dental Law Partnership's David Corless-Smith said the vast majority of complaints were about sub-standard work. "An OFT investigation is long overdue," he added.