Bristol dentist says the government’s ‘dental recovery plan’ simply won’t work

The owner of a Bristol dentist has raised concerns about the Government’s dental recovery plan. St Pauls dental practice owner Shivani Bhandari believes the scheme will actually result in fewer NHS patients.

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Victoria Atkins, announced in February that this year the Government would give dentists money to see new NHS patients, introduce dental vans to rural areas, run outreach programs in nurseries and family centers and will consult on water extension. fluoridation. Under the new policy, dentists receive one-off payments for seeing patients who have not seen a dentist in two years of either £15 or £50, depending on the treatment provided.

But Ms Bhandari, who has taken on a large number of new NHS patients since opening, believes the policy will be detrimental to existing NHS patients. “While this reform will allow new patients to be seen by dentists, this will come at the cost of seeing fewer of the patients already enrolled.

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“So generally practices like ours will see fewer patients in their financial year to meet their target. It doesn’t solve the problem, it just changes the problem,” she explained.

A survey of UK dentists by the British Dental Association shows that almost half believe the reforms will lead to their practice seeing fewer NHS patients. In the same survey, only 1% of dentists believed the plan would deliver on the promise that “everyone who needs a dentist will see one.”

Another problem with the reform, raised by Ms Bhandari and others working in the sector, is that no new money is being invested to support the policy. The extra payments for new patients are being funded by underspending the £3bn budget “which has barely grown in a decade”, according to the BDA.

While the new practice in St Pauls, which opened in February, involved new NHS patients, who in some cases queued outside for days, this was the result of a community campaign rather than any change of politics. The practice was tasked with taking over the operation after Bupa closed.

Ms Bhandari, who is practice co-ordinator at Twindent Dental Care in Southmead, added: “Both of our practices have been actively involved in providing NHS dental care to our community. Before the reform, we proudly served a significant number of NHS patients and consistently exceeded our contractual obligations.

“This recent communication and clarification from the BDA on how this scheme and reimbursement will work has shed light on a disturbing reality.

“Despite our efforts to increase accessibility to NHS dental services, the new reform will make our practice less productive and hinder our ability to serve more people in our community. This created a perverse incentive for us to reduce patient intake to maintain the same contractual agreement. value, contrary to our mission to expand access to dental care.”