A pledge to provide an extra 1.5m NHS dental treatments in England this year is “in disarray” according to the report amid falls in both the number of dentists doing NHS work and people receiving care from them.
And even if this goal was reached, it would still be 2.6m fewer treatments per year than pre-pandemic levels, the NAO said.
Additionally, an investigation carried out by the British Dental Association and Daily Mirror suggests 96% of dental practices are not accepting new NHS adult patients and at least one in 10 constituencies in England do not have a single practice taking people on.
Background
The dental recovery plan was published in February 2024 under the previous government and aims to increase access to NHS dentistry services. The £200m plan was intended to deliver more than 1.5m additional NHS dentistry treatments (or 2.5m appointments) in 2024-25 and has three components.
The additional courses of treatment in 2024-25 were intended to come from the first of these components, through four headline initiatives:
- mobile dental vans to deliver some dental services to targeted communities
- a new patient premium, in which participating dental practices receive a credit of units of dental activity (UDAs) equivalent to £15 or £50 (depending on the course of treatment) for eligible new patients
- ‘golden hello’ recruitment incentives of £20,000 (phased over three years) for 240 dentists to work in areas with recruitment and retention challenges in NHS dentistry
- an uplift to the minimum value of a UDA to £28.
The NAO report sets out information on the current delivery of NHS dentistry services and the development and progress of the plan for 2024-25. It looks at:
- access to NHS dentistry before the plan
- development of the 2024 dental recovery plan
- the government’s progress against the dental recovery plan’s objectives and plans for evaluation
The NAO said: “The dental recovery plan aspires to deliver more than an additional 1.5m courses of treatment in 2024-25 but is not currently on course to do so.
“Even if these additional courses of treatment are delivered by the end of 2024-25, the plan would still mean that 2.6m fewer courses of treatment would have been delivered than in 2018-19.”
“Deplorable state of NHS dentistry”
Healthwatch England Chief Executive Louise Ansari said: “These findings underline the deplorable state of NHS dentistry. The difficulty of getting NHS dental treatment is one of the public’s biggest concerns about the healthcare system generally and is a crisis that dental leaders have estimated is denying 13m people access to NHS appointments.”
NAO Report Director Lee Summerfield summarises the findings in this short video:
Source: https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/investigation-into-the-nhs-dental-recovery-plan/
