The General Dental Council (GDC) has responded after the Government looks like it might fail to fulfil its pledge to reform healthcare regulation.

The Conservative’s 2017 General Election manifesto promised primary legislation changes for healthcare regulation, however there was no mention of this in the Queen’s Speech leading BDA chair, Mick Armstrong, to accuse the Government of kicking healthcare regulation ‘into the long grass’.

Improvements

‘We fully support the need to modernise professional healthcare regulation to better protect patients and the public,’ Matthew Hill, executive director, strategy at the General Dental Council, said.

‘The challenge for the GDC and our fellow regulators is to make the system of regulation as fair, proportionate, efficient and patient-focused as possible.

‘While legislative change can facilitate reform, it is important to make significant improvements working within the existing legislative framework.

‘The vision we have set out in Shifting the Balance: a better, fairer system of dental regulation involves focusing a great proportion of resources “upstream” to prevent harm, working in collaboration with patients, dental professionals and our partners and re-focusing fitness to practise to respond to issues that are truly “serious”.

‘We have concluded that the model of dental regulation needs to change to ensure it can meet the challenges that are facing us all and that model can only change by working better with dental professionals, our partners and patients.’