Dentistry crisis: almost 80,000 extra urgent NHS dental appointments for Yorkshire and the Humber
Almost 80,000 additional urgent NHS dental appointments will be available for patients in Yorkshire from April, however experts have warned this will do little to alleviate the dentistry crisis.
Care Minister Stephen Kinnock announced today an extra 700,000 emergency appointments will be made available across the country from 1 April for people with infections, abscesses and cracked or broken teeth.
Of those, 79,491 will be in Yorkshire, with Mr Kinnock having written to the region’s three Integrated Care Board (ICB) areas issuing new targets for the next 12 months.
Patients will be able to access them by contacting their practice or calling NHS 111 if they do not have a regular dentist.
Mr Kinnock explained: “We've looked at where unmet need was greatest, and that's where the targets are highest.”
He told The Yorkshire Post that he had heard “heartbreaking stories of people having to remove their own teeth with a pair of pliers”.
“We inherited an NHS dentistry system that is on its knees,” he said.
“A staggering one in four people across England can't get an NHS dental appointment, and the biggest cause of children, between five and nine, being admitted to hospital is to have their rotten teeth removed, is, frankly, a disgraceful state of affairs.”
The Care Minister also revealed that Labour’s controversial supervised school tooth brushing scheme, for three to five-year-olds, will “very soon” be rolled out across England, “with a particular focus on deprived areas”.
However, the British Dental Association has warned that additional urgent dental appointments is a minimal uplift, which equates to two extra cases for every NHS dentist a month.
Shiv Pabary, chair of the BDA’s General Dental Practice Committee, said: “It’s progress, but government could have fired the starting gun on commissioning urgent care last summer.
“Action here will translate into just two extra slots a month for each NHS dentist.
“NHS dentistry had ceased to exist for families across Yorkshire long before Covid struck.
“Ministers must now confront the failed contract that’s left millions with no options.”
The BDA also expressed concern that ICBs have been offered no framework for delivering these 700,000 appointments, and there is no additional funding for this.
Its analysis of government data found 13 million people are unable to access an NHS dentist, while in the North East and Yorkshire 97 per cent of people who try and access NHS dental services fail.
The Humber and North Yorkshire ICB has only 31 dentists with NHS activity per every 100,000 of the local population, while South Yorkshire has the highest rate of tooth extractions in the country.
Mr Kinnock said he recognised “that there's a bigger piece of work to be done about routine dental treatment and about prevention, and we need to renegotiate the NHS dentistry contract to make it more appealing”.
He said the Government was offering a bonus payment of £20,000, for up to 240 dentists to work in “dental desert” areas of the country that have traditionally been hard to recruit to.
“Once we've got fundamental reform of the contract and NHS dentistry becomes more appealing, we believe that we will start to see dental practices reopening or opening in parts of the country that are under served,” he added.
“In the meantime we're saying reprioritise your dental budget, focus it on urgent care because we've got to deal with what's urgent right now.”