Given ongoing local interest understandably reflected in my inbox, I would like to reassure everyone locally that dentistry access and provision here in Corby & East Northamptonshire remains a priority for the NHS, who are working at pace to address the challenges currently facing these services. I was therefore pleased to recently receive a further update from the NHS about how services are being improved nationally, which I have included here in full:
“Last summer, NHS England enacted the first substantial reforms to the NHS dental contract in 16 years, bringing in a series of initial changes that are already making a difference to patient’s and dentists’ experience of the service. These reforms include the following changes:
• NHS dentists are paid more for treating more complex and high needs patients. This is known as the UDA system – Units of Dental Activity. The NHS have increased the rate awarded for certain Band 2 courses of treatment for patients with higher needs. These treatments include fillings, root canal and teeth extraction.
• Practices with the lowest NHS income are being supported with the introduction of a minimum activity value of £23.
• Dental capacity has been increased by making dental therapists, as well as dentists, able to accept patients for NHS treatments, providing fillings, sealants, preventative care for adults and children. This will free up dentists’ time for urgent and complex cases, as well as treating children.
• Contractors are now required to maintain and update their details on NHS.uk to support patients to find an NHS dentist who can deliver care locally.
• High-performing dental practices have been granted the opportunity to increase their activity by a further 10% and to see as many patients as possible.
• Reporting has been amended to ensure recall intervals are based on what individual patients actually need, in accordance with NICE guidance (In practice, this means healthy patients only need to see a dentist every 1-2 years and capacity is freed up for more urgent work).
Through these changes and the hard work of the profession, there are early signs of recovery in dentistry. Over the last financial year, NHS dentists have delivered 30.8 million courses of treatment, up from 26.6 million treatments during the year before, which is a 16% increase. In February of this year, 20% of all Band 2 courses of treatment qualified for the new higher rate payment. And in March, thanks to our reforms to incentivise high-performing practices to increase their NHS activity, 101% of contracted activity was delivered on a month-by-month basis, up from 71% in December.
Progress is being made but there’s plenty more to be done; last summer’s reforms are the first step in a programme of reform, and focuses have already been identified for the next stages of reform after productive engagement with the sector, which includes supporting patients who don’t currently have access to an NHS dentist, improving the current UDA system to support higher needs patients and supporting the professional development of dental teams to help make the NHS a rewarding place to practice dentistry.”
Quite clearly, there is still significant work to do to boost capacity locally, at a time when demand is so high. Rest assured, I shall continue to press on this extremely important issue for local people and provide further updates here as I have them. To that end, I have been extremely grateful to all those who have raised dentistry access related issues with me in recent weeks and months - this is extremely helpful in arming me with all the detail of what is happening on the ground and steering the conversations I have about local need, and I would ask people to continue to do so, not least with responsibility for dentistry about to move to the Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board, and so I am keen to have informed conversations with them about priority action from day one of them assuming responsibility for these services.