A ‘HIGHLY-skilled’ Basingstoke dentist has been banned from practising for eight months after he refused to give a dead patient’s family a refund for ‘incomplete’ treatment.

James Kleiber, medical director at Glenholme Dental Centre, in Chequers Road, appeared before a professional conduct committee of the General Dental Council (GDC) to answer allegations of misleading conduct.

Claims were made against Mr Kleiber after a patient had paid £10,450 in advance for the work, but when the patient’s family said the procedure was incomplete and asked for a refund, he said it had been finished.

The GDC stopped short of revoking Mr Klieber’s registration as the ‘very competent’ practitioner’s conduct was seen to be out-of-character.

Treatment for possible tooth implants and replacement dentures was carried out in early 2015.

But when the patient died on May 9, 2015, it was alleged the treatment had not been finished, so the family asked for a refund.

The report from the GDC said Mr Kleiber’s subsequent communications with the family were “misleading and dishonest”

and his conduct showed “a lack of integrity.”

During the hearing, committee members were presented with evidence in which Mr Kleiber claimed he had confused the patient in question with another one of his patients.

However, the report noted that “it is not plausible that you confused Patient A with another patient as you maintain”.

The report read: “The evidence presented to the committee demonstrates that it is more likely than not that you knew that the work to finalise and fit the final prosthesis had not been completed.

“The committee finds that it is implausible that you considered at the time that the work had been completed, and that instead you are more likely than not to have known that it was probable that there was a considerable amount of work still to be completed at the time of Patient A’s passing.”

In suspending Kleiber immediately from practicing for eight months, the report read: “Your dishonest conduct was repeated and sustained over a period of some months and involved the making of false statements to the family of Patient A and the solicitors acting on their behalf...

“The committee gave serious consideration to the question of whether your registration should be erased but determined that although your dishonesty and unethical conduct were serious departures from acceptable behaviour, they do not indicate such deep-seated, personal or attitudinal problems that they cannot be remedied.

“You are clearly a very competent and highly skilled clinician and there is a public interest in your return to practise if that can be achieved without risk to the public or the reputation of the profession.”

A statement from the Glenholme management team said: “While we cannot comment on the report, we would like to add the following comment on behalf of Glenholme Dental Centre.

“One of James’ highly skilled colleagues will be covering his position at Glenholme during the eight months he is not available. We also still have the rest of our highly skilled team in place to continue providing the excellent service that we are so well know for. In this way there should be little interruption for our patients and the services we provide to the local dental community, and it’s business as usual.”