Botched dental work will cost £2,000 to fix!
D.J. writes: My 84-year-old disabled wife needed a tooth extraction, which was carried out at Mydentist. Following this, she suffered pain and returned to the practice where she discovered the dentist had also removed the cap on the tooth next to the one extracted, exposing the root. A new dentist said she needed a root removal at hospital, but because of lockdown this took six months to arrange. She then went back to Mydentist to replace the capped tooth, only to be told the original dentist had left the country, and she now faces costs of over £2,000 for repair work.
YOU have told me that when you asked whether the missing dentist was insured against making dental problems worse instead of better, Mydentist replied that it did not have records of his insurance cover. You also gained the impression that Mydentist, which has branches all over the country, does not actually employ its dentists but simply provides premises and equipment.
Armed with a legally binding consent letter from your wife, allowing the company to discuss her treatment, I approached IDH Group Limited, the Manchester business behind the Mydentist chain. But extracting information was a bit like, well, pulling teeth from an unwilling patient.
Mydentist refused point blank to talk about your wife. It told me: ‘Unfortunately, we are unable to share specific details about a patient’s treatment or dental history, even with their consent.’ The company later conceded that it would share those details if you hired a solicitor to do battle with it, but there was no way it would talk to me.
It did tell me that under General Dental Council rules, all dentists are required to have their own indemnity insurance and are personally responsible for the treatment they provide. And it added that it was not correct to say that the company does not employ its dentists, and simply rents out premises.
So does this mean that Mydentist employs all the dentists at its branches? Actually no, it does not. It finally told me it has both employed and self-employed dentists. So where does this leave your wife and her hope that she could claim under the missing dentist’s insurance policy?
Mydentist sidestepped the issue of whether its departed dentist was properly insured, but after a lot of pressure it issued a statement, saying: ‘We have thoroughly investigated this issue and want to ensure the patient’s concerns are quickly addressed. As a gesture of goodwill, we will therefore be completing the patient’s current course of treatment at the practice at no extra cost.’
Since Mydentist refuses to talk about what went wrong with your wife’s original extraction, or about her current treatment, I have to assume that her latest spell in the dentist’s chair is aimed at putting right whatever went wrong so many months ago, and that she will not be charged for this. If any of this is wrong, please tell me and I shall be glad to return to the problem in print, no matter how much Mydentist squirms and tries to hide what really happened.