Withdrawals

What are Withdrawals?

A withdrawal is where you, your practice or the patient has decided the patient is to be removed from a your list of registered patients. This occurs when there is a request for the registration record to be withdrawn, usually made by the dentist and approved by the NHS Board.

A patient can be withdrawn for a number of reasons which include, but not exclusively, a dentist moving to another area, non-payment of charges by the patient, entry in to a private arrangement because the dentist has decided to stop treating some or all categories of NHS patients.

What do I need to do?

To withdraw a patient from your registration list you must submit a GP200 form to your NHS Board, stating the reasons for the request. The patient is entitled to be given a 3-month notice period that their NHS registration with you is being withdrawn. Some circumstances of patient withdrawal, however, can be done without a notification period.

Once the NHS Board approve the request, it will be sent to us, to withdraw the patient from your registration list.

Practitioner Services Withdrawals

From 1 April 2010 there has been no time limit on the registration period for a patient. 

Since then, we have carried out an exercise to match the records held in our payments system, MIDAS, with the Community Health Index (CHI) database. There are now approximately 95% of active records in MIDAS with a CHI number attached. This has allowed us to identify duplicate patients, patients who have emigrated and patients who are deceased. 

We have put a process in place to identify duplicate registrations and withdraw them on a monthly basis.

Where we identify duplicate registrations, the registration created most recently is judged to be valid. Payment will continue for this registration only and will cease for all other active registrations for that patient.

We have implemented an automated process to withdraw registrations for deceased and emigrated patients on a daily basis. This uses a file from CHI that interacts with our payment system and automatically removes these registrations.

The withdrawn patients will be reported in your monthly payment schedule.

If you believe we have withdrawn a patient incorrectly, you should submit a Dental 289 form.