New pilots announced

Friday 19th August 2011

The new coalition has finally announced that 62 pilot practices will trial a new dental contract starting this summer, based on capitation, registration and quality rather than the quantity of treatment provided.

Three variations of the new contract will be tested, with each variation being slightly different in order to provide information on various aspects of the proposals but all will involve dentists being paid per patient as opposed to per treatment restoring the formal right for patients to be registered with a dentist.

The government hopes that a new contract will reverse a trend that has seen more than one million fewer patients visit NHS dentists in the two years after the introduction of the 2006 contract than did so the two years before.

The government says the new system will mean dentists are fairly rewarded through "weighted capitation funding" for the patients they take on, and motivated to provide the best clinical care through financial incentives to improve quality and clinical outcomes.

If successful, these pilots will pave the way for the introduction of a new NHS dental contract in April 2014.