Primary dental providers now work towards compliance standards established across various regulators, chief of which are the Care Quality Commission and the General Dental Council. These bodies ensure that patients receive the best possible treatment and care, whilst ensuring that dental professionals are qualified and registered. To date some 9,654 primary dental providers have been registered to legally operate with the Care Quality Commission.
Dental practices come in a multitude of sizes, from single-handed practices to those with several partners and many employees. The demands on each, irrespective of size, can be considerable, so ensuring that CQC standards are being adhered to is a new, but important development in the systemization of primary dental care provision.
Patients are used to very high levels of dental care in the UK, whether provided by the NHS or privately, so reinforcing those exacting standards by ensure that the patient is always at the heart of treatment planning and decision making is a new, but necessary challenge for all healthcare providers, irrespective of specialism.