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John Bisset / Things
Dentists worry that delaying elective treatment could worsen oral health problems in the future.
Dentists say their businesses are struggling with the cost of personal protective equipment (PPE) in addition to reduced cash flow.
While many industries are feeling the impacts of the coronavirus, dental practices have had the added expense of obtaining PPE for themselves and their patients while operating at level three.
Andrea Koorey, a dentist at Blenheim Dental Care, said that although dentists had always used some form of PPE, it had become more difficult to obtain and pay for since the coronavirus pandemic began.
“Our regular suppliers have been exhausted and are having trouble accessing from abroad with delivery times of a couple of months,” he said.
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“[You can] order now and get it in a couple of months, maybe … and the price has increased significantly from what it was before Covid. ”
Koorey said the practice was seeing emergency patients only under alert level three, similar to the restrictions under alert level four.
He was treating one or two patients a day and spoke to two or three others on the phone.
He was concerned that people would delay elective treatment, which could lead to an accumulation of oral health problems in the future.
While the “big drop in billing and revenue” was cause for concern, he said the practice could hopefully withstand the financial effects of the pandemic.
New Zealand Dental Association (NZDA) president Katie Ayers said that many practices across the country would not be as fortunate.
The cost of EPP coupled with reduced cash flow would see some dentists close their stores, he said.
“Dentists who have been open, when they have been able to see patients, have had to overspend a lot of money on the PPE they need,” he said.
NZDA / Things
New Zealand Dental Association President Dr. Katie Ayers said EPP was costing some dentists $ 100 per patient.
“We understand that many companies are suffering, and we don’t see ourselves as different from the retail and tourism sectors … but we do have the highest cost of PPE, which can cost more than $ 100 per patient.”
“Some of them have spent more than $ 12-15,000 on PPE.”
She said the cost of PPE meant it was often not cost-effective to see patients at level three, but they had done it simply to ease people’s pain.
She said the government needed to intervene to allow the dentist better access to EPP.
“We would really like to see access to the PPE: a, to be able to obtain it and, b, to be able to finance it.”
Scott Hammond / Things
While healthcare workers operating under the DHB received PPE, dentists mostly had to obtain it themselves.
Unlike other healthcare workers, such as general practitioners and pharmacists, there had been no government assistance directed to dentists and many relied solely on the wage subsidy.
As a children’s dentist in the Waikato region, Ayers was also concerned about delays in treatment under tier three restrictions.
In five weeks, he had seen only three patients, two cases of trauma and severe infection, and said the problems were “becoming increasingly severe.”
She had seen a boy with an infection so severe “it was draining his cheek.”
“We are in the current situation when the chances of a patient being admitted, who has gone through all the questions, actually being Covid positive is so low, that we really believe that staying closed is causing us more harm than good.”
