OFT Report Highlights Need For Dental Compliance In Patient Consent Process
A recent Office of Fair Trading (OFT) report emphasizes the need for dentists to accurately identify patient treatment options. The report looked at personalised care plans, including projected costs, as part of the consent to treatment process. Care Quality Commission (CQC) provides guidance on essentials of quality and safety for achieving patient outcomes and following regulations.
The purpose of implementing such guidance is for compliance with regulation and for the best patient care. In meeting CQC outcomes, dentists are required to sufficiently document their decisions in recommending specific options to patients for dental treatments.
Documenting decisions provides a record of choices patients have made when receiving dental treatments. The reason as to why the choices have been recommended and the patients’ consent in selecting a specific treatment are also noted down. It is important to have this information attached to the patient record, including evidence of projected cost of private dental treatments for individual patients. The OFT report highlights this as an area of development for dentists, particularly those delivering private care.
The Dental Advisor or the Medical and Dental Defence Union, Doug Hamilton, points out that it is important for dentists to include a record of projected charges or fees, along with documenting treatment option risks and benefits, when engaging prospective patients in the process of consent. The requirement meets General Dental Council (GDC) standards for clear provision of NHS and/or private dental cost estimates for treatments.
Both NHS and private dentists are required to provide evidence of clinical and ethical reasoning to backup anticipated financial payments for dental treatments. In assessing outcomes for patients, regulators evaluate the written evidence included in the consent process.
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