NHS dentists are facing a backlash for selling Botox and lip fillers for up to £400.
MailOnline found practices across the country flogging aesthetic treatments, including one offering a ‘facial slimming treatment’.
It comes amid a worsening NHS crisis for dental appointments.
Desperate patients have had to endure massive four-am queues in a quest to be seen.
Some have flown to war-torn Ukraine for cheaper private dentistry, while others have resorted to household tools to carry out ‘do-it-yourself’ treatments.
Your browser does not support iframes.
John O’Connell, CEO of think tank the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘When patients try their best to find an available place for basic dentistry, they will wonder how there are so many available places for cosmetic treatments.
“Provided that basic services are available to taxpayers, operations should be able to seek additional sources of revenue.
‘But the first priority is to ensure that good quality dentistry is available to adults and children in every corner of Britain.’
But dentists and patient advocacy groups say dentists themselves are not to blame.
Instead, they argue that offering such aesthetic treatments is one of the few ways in which underfunded NHS dental services can ‘keep the lights on’.
Twyford Dental Care, in Berkshire, has ‘some funding’ for NHS patients after ‘basic’ services.
But pPatients there can get lip filler for £400, and even a ‘facial slimming treatment’ with a muscle blocker for £1,000.
All Smiles Dental Care in Essex is another NHS provider offering a number of aesthetic treatments such as dermal fillers for £250 each.
Meanwhile, West Kensington NHS Dental Care offers both Botox and dermal fillers for up to £350 each, in addition to its healthcare treatments.
Some clinics that prided themselves on taking new NHS patients, such as Wandsworth Dental Centre, are selling Botox for as little as £150.
MailOnline also found other centers taking NHS patients, such as Dental Beauty Islington and Morden Dental Practice, offering aesthetic treatments, although they did not list their prices.
Campaign group Toothless in England, which calls for ‘an NHS dentist for all’, called the situation ‘unfortunate, but unavoidable’.
A lack of funding for NHS dentistry has forced some to turn to the lucrative aesthetic sector, according to Mark Jones, the campaign coordinator.
He told MailOnline: ‘Patients in desperate need of dental treatment will rightly feel offended when they see local services being withdrawn in favor of cosmetic procedures.
‘Despite all the empirical evidence showing that providing good oral care is cost-effective for the NHS, successive governments have failed patients, failed dentists and failed the NHS by failing to ensure sufficient financial reward is embedded in the current dental contract (GDS).
‘Dental practices can hardly be blamed for exploring markets where offering new services makes financial sense.
‘One of Toothless’ campaign objectives in England is to deliver radical reforms to the GDS contract so that NHS dental practices become more common again in our communities.’
Lib Dem health and social care spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said the examples uncovered on this website showed the NHS dental care system was ‘completely broken’.
Your browser does not support iframes.
‘Something has gone terribly wrong if it is easier to make an appointment for cosmetic dental treatment than a check-up at your local NHS dental practice,’ she said.
‘People are crying out for more NHS dental appointments and our hardworking dentists want to treat more NHS patients.
“But this Conservative government’s broken dental contract is letting both patients and dentists down as they fail to fix this mess. It’s time for them to take action.’
Preet Kaur Gill, shadow minister for primary care and health, also called the situation an example of ‘Tory mismanagement’ of NHS dentistry.
“For 14 years, the government has promised reform of the outdated contract but has failed to deliver,” she said.
‘As a result, dentists are leaving the NHS in droves.’
Shawn Charlwood, chairman of the British Dental Association (BDA) general dental practice committee, said practices had offered a mix of NHS and private work since 1948.
However, he added that years of underfunding of NHS dentistry led to more and more dentists turning to private work to ‘keep the lights on’.
“Private work is increasing because the government is failing to provide this agency with a credible rescue plan,” he said.
‘There are dedicated practices delivering NHS care at a loss and relying on private income to keep the lights on and pay the rent.
‘This isn’t the 19th century. Ministers should not expect any healthcare professional to operate as a charity.”
Figures show that 24,151 dentists took on NHS work in England in the 2022-2023 period, compared to 24,272 in the previous financial year – a decrease of 121 year-on-year.
A different kind of filling. NHS clinics are offering cosmetic procedures such as Botox and dermal fillers, while dozens of patients are struggling to access basic dental care. Unions warn there is a growing trend for dentists to offer such treatments to ‘keep the lights on’
The total is also around 500 fewer than the number of dentists doing healthcare work in 2019-2020, the last year before the Covid pandemic hit.
The BDA fears numbers could fall further to below 24,000, a figure not recorded since 2014-15.
Visitor numbers to NHS dentists for both adults and children fell off a cliff during the Covid pandemic as practices closed as part of the lockdown rules and stopped offering treatments.
But it has failed to recover despite the pandemic’s darkest days being far in the past.
Industry experts suggest this is because offering NHS treatment is not as lucrative as private treatment.
Old NHS contracts for dentists paid them for batches of work carried out rather than for individual treatments, no matter how complicated a particular case was.
In practice, this meant that NHS dentists were paid the same for treating a patient who needed ten fillings as for a patient who only needed one.
This resulted in dentists sometimes losing money treating NHS patients as the reimbursement did not cover the cost of the procedure.
Although this contact has now been reformed, the BDA estimates that thousands of NHS dentists have left or massively scaled back their NHS work following the pandemic.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: ‘We have been working closely with the British Dental Association and others to reform dental contracting in 2022, including paying dentists more to treat more complex patients.
‘As a result, we have seen improvements, with 1.7 million more adults and 800,000 more children going to the dentist last year compared to 2022.
‘We are continuing this work with industry to develop further reforms that will properly reflect the different healthcare needs of patients, reimburse practices fairly and expand and support the NHS dental workforce.’
The spokesperson also highlighted the government’s recently announced £200 million dental recovery plan.
This will provide financial incentives for dentists to take on new NHS patients and £20,000 of golden hello’s to help dentists work in so-called ‘dental deserts’ in a bid to get a further 2.5 million appointments over the next year.
The overall plan – which was unveiled ten months after it was promised – was rejected by dental bosses and politicians as not going far enough.
The BDA has said that this amounts to ‘rearranging the deckchairs’ and will not bring the desired and much-needed change.
Dental practices have also been approached for comment.