Police called to track down Orkney dentist who disappeared after inspection

NHS Orkney has confirmed it is not expecting a local dentist, who vanished following an inspection of his premises, to return.

However, the health authority’s head of dentistry has also said police have indicated that Nick Deyanov is “well” and is not currently in Orkney.

Last week, NHS Orkney put out a statement saying it had suspended the dentist’s NHS treatments.

This was after a routine inspection was carried out last November.

While the health authority had been hoping to work with the dentist to make improvements, it has been unable to contact him for eight weeks.

The health authority made a report to Police Scotland for Dr Deyanov’s welfare.

In the meantime, the private dental practice in Kirkwall remains closed.

NHS Orkney’s director of dentistry, Steven Johnston, said: “We’re in excess of eight weeks with no contact from him.

“Initially, that was a concern, but we’ve had contact with Police Scotland.

“Based on the limited information the police were able to give us, we’re not expecting that he’s going to return.

“I can’t make any assumptions about what the police found other than to assure us that he’s not currently in the area.

Deyanov Dental Practice has been closed LDRS

“They indicated that it looks like he’s well. He’s not come to any harm suddenly or anything like that.”

Despite this, Mr Johnston said attempts are still being made by NHS Orkney to contact Dr Deyanov.

Asked if they have any idea where he could be, Mr Johnston said Dr Deyanov has “connections with other places around the world where he could be”.

Mr Johnston said: “It’s not something within our power or remit to chase that up.

“It would have been nice to hear from him to know that he’s okay.

“But, we haven’t unfortunately.”

Mr Johnston said NHS Orkney has been able to gain access to the Deyanov practice to secure both private and NHS patient records.

While it’s not known how many private patients the practice had, it had “less than 50” NHS patients, many of whom hadn’t been seen in several years.

What did inspectors find concerning at Deyanov Dental?

The report produced after the Combined Practice Inspection last November has not been made public.

However, Mr Johnston said a redacted version of it will become available.

He said the inspection showed a number of improvements that needed to be made.

Many of these involved being unable to produce paperwork.

He said: “There were some initial concerns, predominantly around his personnel.

“He’s got a small staffing level. It was just him and a trainee dental nurse, who happened to be his wife.

“It wasn’t that they didn’t have training; they just couldn’t produce evidence of the training during the inspection.

“There were a number of health and safety, HR, and radiation protection-type policies and paperwork in the background that weren’t in place, which we would expect to be in place.

“There were some concerns around the level of record-keeping by Dr Deyanov.

Concerns over equipment decontamination

“A few bits of equipment were out of date and needed some servicing, or evidence that the servicing had been carried out was needed.

“All of that wasn’t insurmountable though.

“We could have worked with him and solved all of those things fairly promptly.”

Mr Johnston also said the inspection didn’t look at the practice’s decontamination unit, in the belief that its instruments were being cleaned at the Balfour Hospital.

However, this wasn’t the whole picture.

Mr Johnston said: “We have a central decontamination unit here. That’s where we thought all of his instruments were going.

“After the inspection, there was further investigation into where his instruments were going.

“It became apparent that he was still using his local decontamination unit at the practice.

“Because the inspectors hadn’t been notified of that during the inspection, we had to come back and do a further inspection of the practice for him.

“As part of the follow-up investigation to look at the decontamination equipment, we found that his autoclave – the main sterilising equipment – was in good working order, it just didn’t have the paperwork to say that it had been serviced.

“While there were some improvements to be made, there were no concerns that meant we had to go to patients with concerns about any infection control risk to them

“But, by the time we reached that stage in the proceedings, we’d already lost contact with Nick.”

Just two years ago Orkney was said to be at a “crisis point” with regard to local dentist staffing levels.

It seems likely those struggles will be made worse by Dr Deyanov’s absence.

Mr Johnston said: “His loss is going to be felt. He’s been here for a long time

“He’ll have many patients who admire him and have gotten to know him.

“Continuity of care is very important in dentistry.

“Outside Nick’s practice, the public dental service here at the Balfour hospital and NHS Orkney has been struggling to recruit to various key posts.

“Beyond that, we have a group of three practices operating.

“So, it’s quite a small set up. There has been some success in recruiting in general dental practice in Orkney.

“We’re hoping that’s on the up. Across three practices, they’ve managed to increase their staffing level there.

“While they’re focusing on their backlog of treatment right now, we hope in future they will be able to see some new patients.”