Dentists have described a Polish recruitment scheme aimed at tackling an NHS shortage as a short-term fix.
The criticism came as the first dentists from Poland arrived as part of the Scottish Executive drive.
Scots in many areas have struggled to find an NHS dentist partly because increasing numbers of practices have opted out of the health service.
Dental leaders have also rejected a multi-million pound scheme to encourage more practices to treat NHS patients.
The British Dental Association (BDA) warned the executive's incentive scheme to encourage practices to carry out NHS treatment would have the reverse effect.
To qualify for allowances, practices are required to have at least 500 registered NHS patients per dentist - at least 100 of whom must be fee-paying adults.
Allowance eligibility
But the BDA's Scottish committee said the "target-driven" qualifying criteria would mean more practices might abandon all health service patients to focus solely on private work.
Instead it is calling for "a more equitable sliding scale". This would mean all dentists treating NHS patients would be eligible for the allowances, and those with the greatest commitment would be eligible for higher levels of payments.
Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald, who met the Polish dentists on Monday, insisted the executive had no intention of reviewing the qualification for allowances introduced last October.
Patient threshold
He said: "The main problem of access to NHS dentistry is for adult patients who are de-registered against their will and then forced to pay for private treatment.
"For us to invest money without setting a threshold for the number of adult NHS patients a dentist must treat would compound this problem, not solve it."
The first group of 11 dentists from Poland will deployed in Fife, Forth Valley and Argyll and Clyde.
More than 30 dentists are involved in the scheme and it is expected the final group will be in their surgeries by September.
(BBC)
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