Cost-of-Service Review gets underway in Northern Ireland

A study to review the true cost to practices of providing health service dentistry in the General Dental Services (GDS) is set to get underway across Northern Ireland.

The Department of Health (DoH) has confirmed that Professor Ciaran O’Neill, Professor of Health Economics within the Centre for Public Health at Queen’s University Belfast, has been appointed to carry out the review.

The main objective will be to identify the cost per hour of running a dental chair to deliver health service treatment within a dental surgery in a majority health service dental practice in Northern Ireland.

Representatives from the British Dental Association (BDA) will be meeting with Professor O’Neill in the coming days to discuss considerations for the methodology to be used to inform this review. A BDA spokesman said: “A Cost-of Service-Review was approved by the Minister earlier this year.

“It follows repeated calls to have fees rebased according to the true cost to provide care to make health service dentistry financially viable.

“The Minister has committed to commissioning a Cost-of-Service Review to be completed in 2025-26, which he has said ‘will provide the information necessary to inform the future of GDS in Northern Ireland’.

“He has told the Stormont Health Committee that this study ‘will satisfy the BDA’s recent request for an informed GDS fee rebasing exercise’.”