PPE puts dentists out of pocket

Dentists say their businesses are struggling with the cost of personal protective equipment (PPE) on top of reduced cash flow.

While many industries are feeling the impacts of coronavirus, dental practices have had the additional expense of sourcing PPE for themselves and their patients while operating at alert level three.

Blenheim Dental Care dentist Andrea Koorey said although dentists had always worn some form of PPE, it had become harder to source and afford since the coronavirus pandemic began.

‘‘Our usual suppliers have all pretty much sold out, and they’re having trouble accessing it from overseas with lead times of a couple of months,’’ she said.

‘‘[You can] order it now and get it in a couple of months’ time perhaps . . . and the price has significantly gone up from what it was pre-covid.’’

Koorey said the practice was seeing emergency patients only under alert level three, similar to restrictions under level four. She was seeing just one or two patients a day, and speaking with another two or three via phone.

She was concerned about people delaying elective treatment, which could lead to a backlog of oral health problems. While the ‘‘huge drop in turnover and revenue’’ was a concern, she hoped the practice would weather the pandemic’s financial effects.

New Zealand Dental Association president Katie Ayers said many practices would not be so lucky – the cost of PPE and a reduced cash flow would see some dentists shut up shop.

‘‘The dentists that have been open, when they have been able to see patients, they’ve been having to spend a lot of excess money on the PPE they require.

We understand lots of businesses are hurting, and we don’t see ourselves as different from the retail sector and the tourism sector ... but we do have the increased cost of PPE, which can cost in excess of $100 a patient. Some of them have spent in excess of $12,000-15,000 on PPE.’’

Ayers said the cost meant it was often not cost-effective to see patients at level three, but they had done so to get people out of pain. She said the government needed to step in to allow better dentist access to PPE.

Unlike for other healthcare workers such as general practitioners and pharmacists, there had been no targeted assistance for dentists and many were relying just on the wage subsidy.

A children’s dentist in the Waikato region, Ayers was concerned about the delays in treatment under level three. In five weeks she had seen just three patients — two trauma cases and serious infection — and said the problems were ‘‘getting more and more severe.’’

She had seen a child with an infection so severe ‘‘it was draining out her cheek’’.

‘‘We’re at the situation now when the chances of a patient coming in, that has been through all the questions, actually being Covid positive is so slim, that we actually think keeping us closed is causing us more harm than benefit.’’