My first day back at work was yesterday (Monday 7th February).
I arrived at the practice at approximately 8am, caught up with a few people and emptied my inboxes (I have that really cool system where I can dictate my emails and super Marie, my PA types them, so my inboxes were empty in about 35 minutes).
At 9.10am we have our Monday meeting which is an extended huddle that we have for about 20 minutes on a Monday morning before we see our first patients at 9.30am.
It’s videoed and put-on Slack so everyone can see it and we have a chat about whatever is on our minds at the moment but yesterday it was just about my sabbatical and my return.
My new clinical set-up means I don’t have patients on a Monday morning but I’m just upstairs really in a ‘supervisory role’ but by approximately 9.40am Lauren, our Practice Manager, had handed me a letter.
Lauren is amazing and she’s worked with us now for about 8 or 9 months, taking on the role of Practice Manager to free up Hayley for the role of Managing Director but Lauren has extensive experience from QMC (the huge teaching hospital in Nottingham) in dealing with complaints.
The 1-page hand-written letter that I received was not unexpected and relates to treatment of a patient at the clinic towards the end of last year.
As I do with all of these things now, it’s worth explaining that the patient’s treatment may or may not have started within the last 10 or 15 years at the clinic. The patient may or may not be female and in fact they may be completely fictitious and have not attended the practice at all. Any reference to the patient’s sex in this discussion is purely coincidental and essential for the telling of the narrative.
The letter is 1 page and hand-written, it was sent special delivery at the cost of nearly £7.
It’s in thick black ink and at the top in a hand drawn box there’s the patients bank details.
The letter is in relation to a claim for compensation for the cancellation of treatment and we’d been requested to pay £3,316 by this Friday or (this is in bold) I’ll be referred to the GDC.
I’ll not go through the extent of what’s in the letter which is not an extensive letter (if you remember from previous blogs, I received a GDC complaint which was 76 pages in 2 bound volumes) but the main theme of the letter is encompassed by the word ‘BOGUS’ which is repeated in capital letters throughout the letter.
If you search bogus on google, certainly on my search engine the first meaning comes up as:
adjective
“Not genuine or true (used in a disapproving manner when deception has been attempted)”.
That’s an accusation of dishonesty.
All of us at The Clinic remember this case particularly well and when the individual attended the practice in the first instance they explained with great vigour and glee how they sued previous other dentists and had money returned back and treatment received.
I was fully aware of this when we discussed this with the patient, and they’d been in the practice years earlier for a consultation and I proceeded with treatment.
The patients General Dental Practitioner is known to me and I rate them as being a very conscientious and caring individual.
We carried out full diagnostic treatment for the patient, only to identify further disease which had come to light on a CT scan and explained to the patient that we were not happy to proceed with treatment without dealing with the initial disease in the first instance.
The patient was insistent they wished implant treatment on the other side of the mouth and those teeth were to be left, I declined to provide treatment at that stage and the patient then said they would contact the practice to request repayment of the diagnostic fees.
That was months ago and then we received a letter requesting refund for the diagnostic fees, payment for pain and suffering, plus court fees, travel etc.
The letter is horrible.
It puts a short deadline on payment of treatment or else a referral to the GDC will be made.
It’s threatening and intimidating and bulling.
The individual in questions suggests they’ve now had implant treatment carried out somewhere else and the teeth were left in place and all is well therefore my treatment is (in bold) BOGUS.
It’s worth considering the fact that the patient has had treatment elsewhere without a proper history being taken and without requesting notes, tests and radiographs from a practice where the patient was recently treated.
It’s altogether possible that I’m not the one at fault here.
We encounter these situations more and more where patients now feel that they have complete control over us and just a threat of legal action or indeed regulatory action will see us capitulate and pay out any amount of money in order to ‘make things go away’.
Whilst I completely respect and uphold any patients’ right to question their treatment and to question the quality of treatment carried out to ensure that they’re satisfied, I utterly object to being intimidated and bullied and in particular to have someone easily throw a suggestion towards me that my team or I are in any way dishonest.
We will return a response to this in a normal way within our complaints process timescale (which will fall outside the timescale the patient has demanded for payment of money).
We will explain clearly the process that we have been through and the fact that diagnostic charges are not refundable because the treatment has been carried out, assessed and reported and analysed and provided back to the patient.
Should the patient wish to take this elsewhere for further treatment it would have been fully available and no threat of legal action, litigation is likely to get me to capitulate bullying.
And so, here we are again. Probably in a case which will go to law and probably in a case where I will have to spend the hours producing the content which is required to defend our reputation against what I consider to be a vindictive and unfounded attack on our reputation.
With that in mind, as I reply to this letter, I will make it entirely clear that I absolutely uphold the right for any patient to question their treatment whilst still upholding the right to defend myself and my team against unfounded allegations of dishonesty.
There was a time where this would have derailed me or set me back or made me wonder why I come.
One way or another, I’ve been involved in literally hundreds and hundreds of these cases either as an expert witness or as a registrant under investigation or as a friend and colleague in discussion.
I’ll put aside a couple of hours and sort the admin out for this and look at it with an eye of curiosity and intellectual interest and then move along to other interesting stuff.
Blog Post Number - 2989
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