Plan to solve dentistry crisis has 'failed' says spending watchdog
Plans to tackle the dental care crisis by providing millions of additional NHS treatments are not working, according to the UK's independent public spending watchdog.
The National Audit Office (NAO) said targets set by the previous government in February will not deliver an extra 1.5 million treatments in NHS dental services by the end of the financial year.
Even if the goal was reached, it would still mean 2.6 million less treatments would be delivered than pre-pandemic levels - and fewer new patients have been seen by NHS dentists since the plan was introduced, the NAO also found.
Health officials are currently reviewing the package of measures set out in the recovery plan, which include so-called financial rewards for dentists moving to under-served areas, mobile dental vans and new patient “premiums”.
The Conservative government's plans also pledged that "everyone who needs to see a dentist will be able to" in 2024.
Shawn Charlwood, chairman of the British Dental Association’s (BDA) General Dental Practice Committee, said: “We warned at the outset that this recovery plan was unworthy of the title. Unfunded, unambitious policies failed to make a dent in a crisis hitting millions.
“A new Government must show it is willing to learn from its predecessor’s mistakes.”
The report comes as the BDA warned that dentistry in the UK is in “crisis” as it urged the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry to specifically examine the impact of the pandemic on dental services.
Health Minister Stephen Kinnock said the current government is working to provide an extra 700,000 urgent dental appointments to those in need, and will work to encourage more dentists to offer NHS services.
“We have inherited a dental service where many people are struggling to find an NHS dentist and a recovery plan that is not fit for purpose," he said.
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In March 2020, access to dentists was paused as part of the nationwide Coronavirus lockdown. Dental care hubs were put in place by the government to deliver urgent care.
The BDA said dentistry saw a “collapse in capacity seen nowhere else in the health service” and is “yet to recovery to pre-pandemic levels of activity”.
In a plea for the UK Covid-19 Public Inquiry to look into the impact on the sector, the BDA said: “Dentistry faced major problems before lockdown, but the pandemic proved a catalyst, and turbocharged them into a genuinely existential threat to the service."
A spokesperson for the inquiry said it would not be able to examine the pandemic's impact on all areas of healthcare, and that the affects on dentistry would not be investigated.
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