This is how some of Sweden's worst dentists work - drilled broken teeth

The State Dental Support was introduced in 2008 with the aim of making dental care accessible even to those with low incomes. The system is automatic and it is the dentist who gives a discount to the patient and then requests money from the Social Insurance Office. It is therefore this system that some dentists abuse.

When dentists are caught asking for money that they are not entitled to from dental care, the Social Insurance Agency has the right to impose penalties. This can be about asking for money back and starting pre-testing all treatments for which dentists want reimbursement.

SVT News has requested a list of the 42 dental clinics that received such penalties in 2016 and 2017, and of those audited, those who in 2017 turned over more than one million SEK.

This concerns twenty-four clinics, many of which have major shortcomings and have received criticism from the Inspection for Health and Care (IVO) or the Health and Medical Responsibility Committee (HSAN).

One such Stockholm-based clinic is Dentaflix. The clinic has been forced to request pre-examination for certain measures and has a dentist whose gross incapacity led IVO last year to request from the Health and Medical Responsibility Board (HSAN) to revoke the dentist's credentials.

In its inspection report, IVO writes that just over 700 different patients have received 11 583 fillings over five years. This means that most patients have had to repair the same teeth time after time, averaging 16 fillings per patient. One patient had received 164 fillings during the time period. However, the dentist himself writes that it is about patients with dental floss, who often want remediation done.

It is not only IVO and Försäkringskassan that object to Dentaflix's operations, but so does the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, since dentists with X-ray equipment are covered by the authority's regulations and must, for example, have sufficient expertise to manage X-ray devices. In the case of Dentaflix, the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority finds that the clinic lacks expertise for X-ray equipment.

The insurance fund's penalty list also contains a diverse group of companies. The chairman of one of the clinics is active in nine different dental companies, and another dentist has left the country with money that patients have paid in advance.

Several of the clinics have also received patient complaints to IVO, and at least three have had problems with the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority because they did not have staff trained to manage the X-ray devices.

After examining complaints from four patients and then another 19 medical records, the Inspection for Health and Care (IVO) also wants to withdraw the credentials of the dentist behind Alep Dent in Helsingborg. They have found both serious and recurring errors in several areas and have found that neither the hygiene standard has been sufficient.

In Gothenburg there is the dentistry clinic Beväring, which had a turnover of SEK 3 million in 2017. 1 Here, a dentist has, among other things, drilled broken and rooted healthy teeth and exposed them to a treatment that causes the teeth to have irreversibly worse status after the treatment than before, something so serious that, in its report, IVO compares it to abuse.

After that, they temporarily withdrew the dentist's credentials even before HSAN's examination, which is very unusual, since he had been grossly unfit in the practice of his profession and is considered necessary to ensure patient safety.

It is not just about patient-dangerous activities, the Swedish Tax Agency has also investigated the company and found that the company has not managed its finances.

SVT News has sought representatives from the clinics but received no response.

Another of the companies on the sanction list, Citypraktiken studio 54, has a dentist who was criticized by IVO as early as 2016 and has been forced to repay just over SEK 100,000 for dental care that they could not prove they were entitled to. The dentist himself tells SVT News that it is about long-term patient contacts where some were unable to pay, or where payments are made in advance or on payment.

The Social Insurance Agency itself writes in a report that there is a risk that rogue companies will join the system and demand money.

But if the Swedish Social Insurance Agency's random checks show that there are deficiencies at the dentist, they give a signal about it to other inspection authorities, such as the Inspection for Health and Care.

The Social Insurance Office also reports more and more of the cheating dentists they find to the police.