GDC FTP processes to be overhauled

Annual report sets out regulator’s plans for coming year

04 August, 2017 / infocus
 

The coming year will see an “end-to-end” review of the GDC’s entire fitness-to-practise process as well as the introduction of an online tool for the “self-filtering” of complaints, according to the regulator’s latest annual report.

The 2016 publication looks back on a year that has seen the council improve its performance in the eyes of the Professionals Standards Authority, achieving 21 out of 24 standards as opposed to just 15 in 2015.

It was also the year that it published Shifting the Balance: a better, fairer system of dental regulation, where it set out its plans to reform dental regulation.

William Moyes, chair of the GDC Council, said: “In this period of political uncertainty, the GDC is planning for an improved model of dental regulation that is better for patients and fairer for dental professionals.

“The UK’s withdrawal from the European Union and the effect on a range of issues from workforce planning to language testing and how to deliver care to patients with complex, long-term conditions – presents still unknown challenges for the delivery of dental care.

“This is at a time when all health professionals are trying to deliver care that is in patients’ best interests, to populations that are increasingly elderly with multiple, complex conditions.

“And the GDC has faced its own challenges. We improved significantly over the past few years – new people, new processes, tighter controls and much more transparent and engaged with all our key stakeholders, who have generally welcomed the scale and pace of change and the direction in which the GDC has been taken.

“I look forward to working with these stakeholders to deliver our vision of improved dental regulation.”

In the coming weeks, the GDC has announced it will introduce a digital tool that will signpost patients and others to the organisation that is best placed to help them as well as an end-to-end review of its fitness to practise function to “identify further ways to improve
those processes”.

Tags: FtP / GDC

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