Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 31 January 2024
147. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Health his plans for an audit of all dental services in Ireland to ascertain the level of medical card holders in their patient lists; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4364/24]
View answerThe Dental Treatment Services Scheme (DTSS) provides dental care, free of charge, to medical card holders aged 16 and over. The Scheme is provided by dental practitioners who have a contract with the HSE.
The Government is committed to fundamentally reforming dental services, including the DTSS, through implementation of the National Oral Health Policy, Smile agus Sláinte. The HSE has appointed a Strategic Reform Lead to drive Policy implementation across the organisation and to move forward in 2024 with developing new services for both adults and children in line with the Policy. This will include work on planning new services for medical card holders.In 2023 an additional 154,864 treatments were provided with over 26,700 extra unique patients treated through the DTSS when compared with 2022. This follows the expansion of the Scheme in 2022 to include additional prevention treatments and a 40-60% increase in fees paid to dentists across most treatment items. It is not intended to audit individual dental practices in respect of the range of services they provide. However, in order to ensure that all medical card holders can access care, I am asking those dentists who have capacity to take on new patients to give strong consideration to taking on/retaining a DTSS contract in recognition of the unprecedented substantial fee increases that have been put in place and the work that is underway on policy implementation.
