CPME and CED Joint Press Release
Doctors and Dentists in Europe face common challenges

On 15 September 2016, CED President Dr Marco Landi and CPME President Dr Jacques de Haller met to discuss recent trends in dental and medical professions.

Dr Landi and Dr de Haller consider professional autonomy as a cornerstone to safeguard quality of care and patient safety.
The central element of professional autonomy and clinical independence is the assurance that individual dentists and physicians have the freedom to exercise their professional judgment in the care and treatment of their patients without undue influence by outside parties or individuals. “We are serious about preventing any tendencies putting professional autonomy and thus patient safety at risk”, Dr de Haller said.

Both professions have major concerns about the trends in the European Union of introducing standards in clinical, medical and dental care developed by non-medical/dental standardisation bodies, which neither have the necessary professional ethical and technical competencies nor a public mandate. CPME and CED will continue to engage with the wider health community discussing ways forward.

Both professions share concerns about economically driven Brussels agendas challenging professional regulation.
Professional associations are increasingly asked to justify their regulations and to remove any regulatory element considered unjustified, while at the same time they should be defending the public interest, protecting public health and patients’ best interests. Healthcare services differ from other services and this must be duly recognised in the Brussels arena. “We are convinced that our rules are fit for purpose”, Dr Landi said, “and we don`t accept deregulation serving market interests to the detriment of patient safety.”

CED and CPME will further collaborate on the issues at stake striving for high quality of health and access to healthcare.

Note to editors:

The Standing Committee of European Doctors (CPME) represents national medical associations across Europe. We are committed to contributing the medical profession’s point of view to EU institutions and European policy-making through pro-active cooperation on a wide range of health and healthcare related issues.

• We believe the best possible quality of health and access to healthcare should be a reality for everyone.
• We see the patient-doctor relationship as fundamental in achieving these objectives.
• We are committed to interdisciplinary cooperation among doctors and with other health professions.
• We strongly advocate a ‘health in all policies’ approach to encourage cross-sectorial awareness for and action on the determinants of health.

www.cpme.eu

The Council of European Dentists (CED) is a European not-for-profit association representing over 340,000 dental practitioners across Europe through 32 national dental associations and chambers in 30 European countries. Established in 1961 to advise the European Commission on matters relating to the dental profession, the CED aims to promote high standards on oral healthcare and dentistry with effective patient-safety centred professional practice, and to contribute to safeguarding the protection of public health. The CED is registered in the Transparency Register with the ID number 4885579968-84.

www.cedentists.eu