The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has found that issues in the commissioning and delivery of services are a recurring theme in complaints. 

Gaps in NHS dental services and confusion over the responsibility of care have left patients in pain and without appropriate treatment, the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) has said.

Issues in the commissioning and delivery of services beyond dentistry and across the NHS are a recurring theme in complaints to the Ombudsman. 

In one case, a woman waited eight years for treatment for broken teeth after falling into a gap between local dental and hospital services. In another, a patient remained in severe pain for over a year after a dental practice failed to arrange appropriate follow-up treatment after faulty NHS root canal work.

The Ombudsman said the cases highlight wider concerns about how NHS dental care is commissioned and delivered, and confusion about who is responsible for patients receiving the treatment they need.

“We have concerns that the system is confusing for patients, as well as those responsible for managing and delivering NHS services, is not consistently meeting people’s needs, and is letting patients down,” said Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, Paula Sussex. 

“We are reviewing our evidence around NHS commissioning and working to better understand how these problems affect patients. This will help support improvements so that patients receive consistently high standards of care,” she added. 

In both cases, the Ombudsman asked the organisations to apologise to the women, make payments to them to recognise the impact of their failings, and detail what actions they will take to make sure similar failings don’t happen again. Both organisations complied with the recommendations.