Dental fraud

Most dentists would have followed the story of Joyce Trail, a 50 year old Birmingham based dentist, who was convicted of making fraudulent claims in July 2012 after a five-week trial at Birmingham Crown and sentenced on October 5, 2012, by a Crown Court judge to a total seven years of imprisonment.

Trail, who ran Dr Joyce E. Trail & Associates Dental Practice in Hamstead Road, Handsworth, Birmingham was awarded a new NHS GDS Contract in 2006 under the National Health Services Act 1977 by Heart of Birmingham Primary Care Trust but she took advantage of a new way dentists were paid. In April 2006 the payment system changed to what we all know as Units of Dental Activity (UDAs).

Her contract value was between £602-640k per annum, which Heart of Birmingham PCT never queried at the time, given that this contract value would make her one of the highest grossing dentists in the country. Over the next three years she was about to embark on one of the most daring and cavalier operation of its kind in obtaining NHS money and then spending it in style.