We tried for three years to get an NHS appointment. Why can’t we get one? Retired couple says they are ‘keeping their fingers crossed that nothing will go wrong’
A retired couple who spent three years desperately trying to get an appointment with an NHS dentist have resorted to ‘keeping our fingers crossed that nothing will go wrong’.
Ann and Peter Flello from Stafford have been forced to forego regular check-ups since their dental practice stopped treating NHS patients.
The only remaining practice offering NHS appointments has moved and has since only offered private appointments.
The Flellos are among thousands of Britons struggling to access affordable dental care.
The scale of the crisis was perfectly illustrated by hundreds of patients queuing outside a newly opened NHS dental practice in Bristol this week. Some stood in the cold for six hours hoping to be scarred.
Ann and Peter Flello have been forced to forego regular dental check-ups for three years, and are among the thousands of ordinary Brits struggling to access affordable dental care
Ms Flello, 70, told MailOnline she has only seen NHS dentists since she was a child.
“We used to go every 12 months,” she said. ‘Now we have had no checks at all.
‘We keep our fingers crossed that nothing will go wrong and keep a close eye on our oral hygiene.’
The couple have been on the NHS waiting list for the practice’s patients for three years now, and no places have yet become available.
Despite multiple promises of an NHS dentist coming soon, these never materialized, and so the couple are left in limbo.
Ms Flello, who previously worked as a cashier in a supermarket, said the practice has offered to put them on their private list, for a fee of £40 a month.
“It doesn’t seem like much, but if you have to keep paying this £40 for your checks and things like that, it works out to be quite expensive,” she said.
Despite hoping they wouldn’t need emergency dental work like many others, it inevitably happened.
Mr. Flello had a crown on one of his teeth fall out, so naturally they called their dentist for help.
Mrs Flello said: ‘They said, ‘No, we can’t do it on the NHS, but if you come later we can see you in private as quickly as you want.’
Knowing it couldn’t wait, the couple paid £120 to have the crown repaired privately.
The amount is more than four times the equivalent of £25.80 charged by the NHS for such a procedure.
“It had to be done, so that was that,” Ann said.
Just this week the couple tried another dentist in Stafford after being told they were taking NHS patients.
But their hopes were dashed when they learned that while the dentist was taking NHS patients, appointments were reserved for people receiving benefits.
Ms Flello said she was struck by the unfairness of the situation and urged ministers to take action to help people like her.
‘You work all your life, you pay all your NHS payments, and for what?’ she said.
“If you’re sitting at home and you’ve never bothered to work and you’re getting all these benefits and credits, you can just walk in and get what you want.
The NHS dentistry crisis has been going on for years, with some Britons forced to pull out their own teeth with pliers or travel abroad to visit a dentist due to a lack of places in Britain . Others are queuing from 4am to get a spot at dental practices that have opened their lists to NHS patients. Pictured yesterday is the queue of people outside Saint Pauls dental surgery, in St Paul’s, Bristol, which the police had to break up
More patients turned up today longing for an NHS dentist, only to be met with a sign on the door saying: ‘We are no longer registering patients.’ Pictured is the sign outside St Pauls Dental Practice this morning
“We both worked, raised children and then continued working to get to where we are now in retirement, so you don’t have to depend on anyone.
“But if you want a dentist, you can’t get one because you don’t claim anything.”
The couple have been told to wait and ‘try again in the summer’, but past experiences have taught them not to get their hopes up.
“They didn’t even have a waiting list, it’s first come, first served,” she said.
The Flellos are not alone with their dental problems. Other Britons have told how they have taken drastic action during the NHS dental crisis.
Some have described living on painkillers and soup after being unable to get their crowns checked in an affordable way.
Brits have even flown to war-torn Ukraine for private dental work because they couldn’t afford equivalent procedures in Britain.
The government yesterday finally unveiled its long-awaited NHS dental recovery plan, described as ‘putting NHS dentistry on a sustainable footing’.
The latest national figures show that just 43 per cent of over-18s were seen by a dentist in the 24 months to June this year, compared to more than half in the same period before the pandemic struck, although some regions are worse off done than others
Under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s bold blueprint to solve the appointment crisis affecting millions, dentists will be offered up to £50 to see patients who have not had a check-up in the past two years.
In addition, up to 240 dentists willing to relocate to ‘dental deserts’ will receive a ‘golden hello’ of £20,000.
The government is also planning to controversially add fluoride to the drinking water of millions of Britons in a bid to passively protect their oral health.
But the overall plan – unveiled ten months after it was promised – was rejected by dental bosses and politicians as not going far enough.
The British Dental Association said it merely meant ‘rearranging the deckchairs’ and would not deliver the desired and much-needed change.
Healthcare leaders instead called for “radical reform” of the dental contract, accusing Mr Sunak of reneging on his promise to fix the crippled industry.
The crisis has led to the rise of do-it-yourself dentistry, with desperate Britons resorting to using household appliances such as pliers to pull out rotting teeth.
Experts have also raised the terrifying prospect that cases of oral cancer, which are usually caught in the earliest and most treatable stages during routine dental check-ups, will be missed.