Extra urgent and emergency NHS dental appointments for Norfolk
The announcement of thousands of extra urgent and emergency dental appointments for Norfolk has been labelled a “massive step forward” for ending the county’s “dental desert”.
Labour’s South West Norfolk MP Terry Jermy reacted to last Friday’s government announcement of 700,000 extra urgent appointments countrywide - with nearly 22,000 in Norfolk - by saying: “There was no bigger issue I have heard on the doorstep than lack of access to public services, especially dentistry.
“This is a massive step forward to ending Norfolk being the “dental desert” of the UK.”
The county is considered a “dental desert”, with 60 per cent of patients who tried to see an NHS dentist in the last two years unable to do so and concern expressed locally about the number of children with dental decay.
Stephen Kinnock, minister of state for care said: “We promised we would end the misery faced by hundreds of thousands of people unable to get urgent dental care. Today we’re starting to deliver on that commitment.
“NHS dentistry has been left broken after years of neglect with patients left in pain without appointments or queueing around the block just to be seen.
“Through our Plan for Change, this government will rebuild dentistry – focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients. This will take time but today marks an important step towards getting NHS dentistry back on its feet.”
NHS England has written to Integrated Care Boards across the country, directing health chiefs in each region to create thousands of urgent appointments over the next year.
These are expected to be available from April and have been targeted at areas where patients particularly struggle to access NHS dentists.
The British Dental Association has said the extra appointments will translate into every NHS dentist in England seeing “little over two extra urgent cases a month”.
On its website, the BDA said: “We’ve expressed concern that Integrated Care Boards have been offered no national framework for delivering these 700,000 appointments. Last summer we proposed a tried-and-tested model of sessional payments, that has already significantly improved access to urgent care in the North East.
“It’s progress, but Government could have fired the starting gun on commissioning urgent care last summer,” said General Dental Practice Committee chairperson Shiv Pabary, adding: “Ministers must now confront the failed contract that’s left millions with no options.”
The association said: “Despite having pledged new investment in the Labour manifesto, delivery here is to be paid for using underspends in the dental budget, that we know are fuelled by underfunding and workforce problems.”
Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board set out a long-term dental plan to improve dental care in the region and, in a survey last year, Healthwatch Norfolk recommended the accessibility of NHS dentistry is prioritised in the region in terms of both emergency and non-emergency appointments with special thought being given to children and those who are vulnerable in terms of access.
