Dental Contract Monitoring

  DH Guidance End of Year Reports November 2006
This letter confirms the position on end year reports for dental contracts, which PCTs should send to dental contractors before 30 June 2007.  PCTs will need to ensure dentists are aware of the dates by which they need to return activity data. Click here to access the letter.

New Dentistry Contracts - Monitoring for Performance. Learning Events for PCTs.

Click here for further information.

 NHS DENTAL SERVICES: PATIENT CHARGE REVENUE

03/11/2006 Update: This version supercedes the version published on 30th October 2006.  This paper, sent out on 16 October by the Department of Health to SHA Chief Executives for circulation to PCTs, identifies factors that may account for real or apparent reductions in dental patient charge revenue (PCR), sets out possible action for PCTs to consider to reduce risks to PCR, and suggests a step by step approach to financial forecasting to aid accurate service planning and financial monitoring assessments. Click here for the document.

Briefing note - Managing the dental contracts: How to manage a high incidence of charge-free items on monitoring reports

A number of areas have been identified within the BSA Exception Reports for PCTs' attention, and one of these is a higher than expected incidence of charge-free items appearing in some practices' monitoring reports. This paper explains the different types of
charge-free items, looks at the possible reasons behind the higher numbers, and provides PCTs with practical advice on how to handle this situation.

Click here to read the briefing note.

Hints and Tips

This paper sets out to:

• remind PCTs of their contractual responsibilities with dental contracts, and how these responsibilities might be realistically discharged in the first year of implementation;
• provide details about specific areas facing PCTs in the first year of implementation;
• identify some opportunities afforded to PCTs by the dental review process; and
• give details of the current work being undertaken to develop a comprehensive monitoring framework for PCTs to use.

Click here to read this paper.

Please note: An error in the original document, concerning the time limit for submission of forms to the BSA DPD, has been corrected (13/09/2006).

Contract Monitoring Toolkit

The following documents have been produced by PCC, using good practice examples from a number of PCTs. 

The toolkit consists of a suggested process, a monitoring framework and assessment tools with workbooks covering access, governance, quality and activity/finance.

It should be stressed that the toolkit is all inclusive and something which PCTs could be using over the next few years – hopefully focusing on particular workbooks (or part of workbooks) each year.  In the first year in particular, PCTs should be mindful that the local contract is a new way of working for practices and should be sensitive to how the contract is working from the contractor’s perspective. 

Click here to download Contract Monitoring Toolkit, including the monitoring framework and the full assessment tools.

Click here to download the performers proforma

You can also download the workbooks by monitoring theme:

• Click here to download the Access workbook
• Click here to download the Finance
• Click here to download the Quality workbook
• Click here to download the Governance workbook

Click here to download all the above documents in a compressed (Zip) folder