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The Irish Dental Association has denounced the decision by the HSE to dismantle the Medical Card Dental Scheme and to reduce it to one which only provides limited emergency cover for card holders.
The decision to restrict the scheme to one which provides limited emergency cover means that hundreds of thousands of card holders will be denied a range of routine treatments including fillings and extractions as well as denture and treatment of gum disease.
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. It did not say when the new regulations would come into force.
The IDA described the move as unsafe, unworkable and unethical. It said it would hit the most vulnerable in our society the hardest, causing them unnecessary pain and suffering as well as setting back the dental health of the nation by decades. It also said that the cuts did not make any financial sense as every case of delayed treatment would require hugely expensive treatment in future years.
The Chief Executive of the IDA, Fintan Hourihan said his members did not accept the legitimacy of the circular which he said formalized the creation of a "two tier" system between private and public patients. He called on the Minister for Health Mary Harney to direct the HSE to recall it and to engage with the IDA immediately.
"Last month we warned that the 30% 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. Our members are being asked to provide inadequate and inappropriate treatments for patients and it just won't work" Hourihan said.
According to the IDA there has been an increase of 138,000 medical card holders in the last two years while this year 144,000 more people will join the scheme. The IDA 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 euro to 100m euro to cope with the increased demands on the system.
Previously the IDA called on the Minister and the HSE to examine all alternative means of limiting the impact of these cuts. These include agreeing supplementary funding, using the National Treatment Purchase Fund and prioritising spending on the medical card scheme within the wider dental budget.
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