Plans to end the deepening crisis in access to NHS dental care are failing, leaving patients unable to get treatment, according to a warning from the government’s spending watchdog.
The damning judgment of the National Audit Office (NAO). about the “dental recovery plan” patient groups to sound the alarm because the struggle of people with rotten teeth represents “a serious public health problem”.
A pledge to provide 1.5 million extra treatments in England this year is in disarray, amid a fall in both the number of dentists doing NHS work and the number of people receiving care from them.
There is “significant uncertainty” over whether that ambition will be achieved because two key elements of the plan have not been achieved, an NAO study has found. None of the promised new fleet of mobile dental vans have turned up and £20,000 “golden hellos” to entice 240 dentists to work in acute shortage areas has only produced one additional dentist.
The plan, launched in February by the then Conservative government, promised that “anyone who needs a dentist will be able to do so by 2024-2025”.
However, “based on initial analysis to date, the plan is not on track to provide the additional courses of treatment,” the NAO concluded.
Even if the plan delivered what was promised, the NHS would still provide 2.6 million fewer treatments this year than before Covid struck in early 2020, it added.
The NHS provided 4.7 million fewer treatments last year than in 2019-20 and just 40% of adults in England visited a dentist in the two years to March – compared to the 49% who did so before the pandemic, it found the NAO.
Louise Ansari, the chief executive of Healthwatch England, the NHS patient champion, said: “These findings underline the deplorable state of NHS dentistry.”
“The difficulty of accessing dental treatment from the NHS is one of the public’s biggest concerns about the healthcare system in general. It is a crisis that dental leaders estimate is depriving 13 million people of access to NHS appointments.”
The findings were released amid significant public and political concern about the growing number of ‘dental deserts’, where NHS care is unavailable, and the increase in the number of patients having ‘do-it-yourself dentistry’ on their own teeth performs because they cannot get health care funded care and cannot afford to go private.
The two other cornerstones of the plan – a new ‘patient premium’ and an increase in payments to dentists for doing NHS work – have been introduced, the NAO added. NHS England expected the patient incentive, worth up to £50 to the dentist, to deliver 1.13 million of the 1.5 million treatments.
However, the NAO report notes that NHS data up to the end of September shows that “fewer new patients were seen in the first seven months of the premium than in the corresponding period the year before”.
The report shows that the findings so far “do not suggest that the new patient premium is on track to deliver the expected additional course of treatment by March 2025”.
NHS dental care is “broken”, says Rachel Power, the CEO of the Patients Association.
“People live with untreated dental problems, enduring significant pain, as well as the mental and emotional burden of rotten or missing teeth.
“Not being able to access NHS dentistry is no longer just a matter of inconvenience – it is a serious public health problem,” she added. It is “staggering” that there are 483 fewer dentists doing NHS work compared to 2019-2020 and that the NHS dental budget is under-utilised.
Dr. Nigel Carter, director of the charity Oral Health Foundation, said: “The question is no longer whether NHS dentistry can be saved, but whether the Government has the will to make it a real priority before it is too late. ”
People should eat a healthy, low-sugar diet and brush their teeth regularly to reduce the risk of needing care, he advised.
Labor ministers are designing their own pan to tackle the access crisis, but few details have emerged, although they will introduce supervised toothbrushing for three to five-year-olds.
Stephen Kinnock, Secretary of State for Dentistry, said: “We have inherited a dental service where many people struggle to find an NHS dentist and a recovery plan that is not fit for purpose.
“This government is committed to rebuilding dentistry, but that will take time. We are working on further action, prioritizing initiatives that will have the greatest impact on access to NHS dental care.
“We will start with an additional 700,000 urgent dental appointments to help those who need it most, and will reform the dental contract to encourage more dentists to offer NHS services to patients.”