The area of Wales where almost half of NHS dental appointments aren’t being used
Twm Owen – Local Democracy Reporter
Nearly half of the urgent dental appointments available in one area of Wales aren’t being used, NHS bosses have said.
Across Gwent around 20 per cent of the slots paid for by the NHS to carry out emergency work are left unfilled while in Monmouthshire the latest figures for September show 44 per cent weren’t taken.
The Anuerin Bevan University Health Board, that funds NHS dental care for the area, said it is considering whether it has assessed the need correctly or if people are unaware of how they can access the appointments.
Urgent
It is also hoped a new portal, that will act as a first central waiting list for dental treatment, will be rolled out across Gwent from November 20 will help raise awarness of the urgent appointments.
People will be able to access the central website, from the health board’s site, and it will have a helpline for people to register by phone.
Dental services are provided by private practices and in Gwent there are more than 70 offering NHS treatment broken down into 10 practices in Monmouthshire, 11 in Blaenau Gwent, 14 in Newport and the same number in Torfaen with 25 in the Caerphilly unitary authority area.
Though six practices, including four in Monmouthshire, handed back NHS contracts this year Aneurin Bevan’s primary care director Lloyd Hambridge said all have been retendered meaning patients who were registered with an NHS dentist will have been referred to another practice.
Contract
Mr Hambridge also said an increasing number of practices are opting to work under the Welsh Government’s new dental contract rather than the older contract agreed in 2006.
He said: “We’ve had more practices move to the reformed contract than the (older) contracts. Some feel this works well and are voting with their feet and changing contracts.”
The older 2006 contracts were based on “units of dental activity” such as six monthly regular check ups but the new contract is based on assessed clinical need.
Mr Hambridge said the health board’s view is the new contract means “the right people are seen at the right time as opposed to a routine element, with people who may not need (a check up) seen on a routine basis.”
He added: “You now have a time period appropriate to your oral health and that is reviewed and followed up.”
During the 2023/24 financial year eight Monmouthshire practices worked under the older units of activity contract but now all 10 are on the new contract.
Councillors were remined practices that had stopped working with NHS hadn’t gone out of business but simply stopped working with the publicly funded service.
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
It’s because most people don’t even think NHS dental care even exists any more, so why would they seek out NHS emergency care?
I’m completely unsurprised they have completely misunderstood this. I also do not believe there are that many practices with NHS patient vacancies in Gwent. I do not believe there are that many patient vacancies in WALES. Dentists are greedy liars
Here in our corner of north-east Wales NHS dentistry is still to be found, although our experience when we moved here in 2016 was that you had to search around a bit to find it. Our local health board’s website was helpful in pointing us to where we might enquire.
Private dentistry is so unacceptable. People are no longer patients under the care of a professional but customers being sold a dental service at very high cost by business people whose focus is profit.
That’s not true you’ll actually get proper health care at a private dentist as opposed to the bums on seats numbers game in out nhs.
The funding not used is being clawed back because practices have struggled to retain dentists during the transition to a new contract. The local health boards won’t allow practices to work off the claw back (money claimed back where targets aren’t met) and I know of practices this year who have now run out of funding yet the health boards won’t let them work off the claw back they owe. Absolute shambles and what will happen local health boards are using clawback to fill gaps elsewhere in the health board and eventually they’ll collapse dentistry in wales.