An NHS dentist from Devon is one of 62 dentists in England that have been chosen to participate in a pilot scheme whereby they will be paid for the quality of their work, rather than the quantity.
Andrew Curtis from Castle View surgery in Tiverton and the other participants will start the scheme in the summer and proceed for 12 months, with the aim of concentrating more on long-term improvements in people's oral health .
The government introduced a new dental contract five years ago encouraging dentists to sign up with the NHS to carry out more preventative work. Since then progress has been made with 61,000 more patients in Devon being seen by an NHS dentist .
However, recent research conducted by dental health insurance company Simply Health suggested that, while more people could access an NHS dentist, the quality of dental treatment had declined. Mr Curtis said: "From a dentist's point of view, the drawback is that we're on a treadmill and we're always target driven. We do provide a very high quality standard of care, but we are under pressure. With that pressure removed, we should be able to focus more on prevention and quality of treatment."
