Changes to insurance advice welcome, but don’t go far enough.

That’s the view of the leading UK dental litigation firm The Dental Law Partnership (DLP) in response to the latest professional standards review by the General Dental Council (GDC).

Chris Dean, Managing Director at DLP and a trained dentist himself, said the more explicit guidelines were a slight improvement on the old ones.

“They now say you must have appropriate insurance and indemnity in place to make sure patients can pursue compensation and are giving better direction, but it’s not enough.

“Until patients themselves can check whether or not a dentist is insured at the time of treatment, and by which insurance company, the protection afforded by the change in the professional code is illusory.

“The GDC says it will require dentists to provide insurance information to the GDC. We think that the Government should make insurance for dentists a matter of public record and let the public see it – just as employers must make their liability insurance details public.

“After all, why should a dentist have to tell his employees about his insurance for them – to protect from an accident at work – but not have to tell his patients about the insurance for them.

“This is a still a serious loophole which puts thousands of dental patients at risk every year in the UK.”