The government’s commitment to an additional 700,000 dentist appointments is less than a third of the need for dental care in England.
The government is meeting less than a third of the unmet need for urgent dental care, according to a letter sent to NHS England by Amanda Doyle, national director for primary care and community services, and Ali Sparke, director for pharmacy, optometry, dentistry and the NHS Standard Contract both at NHS England.
The government’s manifesto committed to securing 700,000 additional urgent dental care appointments every year for the duration of this parliament, but the letter warned that 2.2 million people are “currently unable to get an NHS dentist appointment, and who have a treatment need”.
“It’s vital that Integrated Care Boards (ICB) build in capacity for follow-up care for high-needs patients in these local schemes. Many patients will need further dental treatment once their immediate urgent care needs are met. Some existing local schemes allow flexibility for these patients to return for follow-up care and this good practice should be adopted elsewhere,” the British Dental Association followed up in a statement.
Growing dental deserts
The growth of dental deserts was highlighted by the Local Government Association’s Community Wellbeing Board.
“These findings reinforce our previous warnings of significant numbers of dental deserts across the country, with many people lacking access to affordable dental care, particularly in rural and deprived communities,” said chairman David Fothergill.
“A lack of NHS dentists could risk people choosing to forgo routine dental treatments or even resort to DIY dentistry, risking more costly emergency dental treatments being needed further down the line,” he continued saying that the Local Government Association would like to see more preventive programmes and investment in tried-and-tested local authority schemes.
His comments echo the disparities in care found in cancer care that Healthcare Today reported on towards the end of February. Cancer death rates are nearly 60% higher for people living in the most deprived areas of the UK compared with the least deprived, with around 28,400 cancer deaths each year linked to socioeconomic inequality.
Sharp rise in dental care claims
An indication of the scale of the dentistry problem can be seen in a new report from Medical Negligence Assist which confirmed that the number of grievances regarding dentistry care has soared.
The medical negligence lawyers found that in the past five years, NHS Trusts across England have paid out £4.2 million in dentistry negligence claims.
NHS Resolution, the legal arm of the health service, says a total of 321 claims and incidents of medical negligence about dental care have been lodged against NHS Trusts in the last five years. Of those, 248 claims were settled with compensation hitting £4.3 million.
The report highlights the Mid and South Essex ICB which has seen the number of formal complaints rise from 24 in 2022/2023 to 90 between July 2023 and September last year.
Of those received in the last year, just over a third (32) related to a lack of NHS dentists in the area, while others related to issues that range from errors in clinical treatment to delays in referrals.
