NHS Dentistry Petition

JasonLVC

The NHS as a whole is going downhill. The closing down of hospitals. Government calls this merging and consolidating. The reality is lack of money/investment into hospitals. This week they're starting to fiddle about with maternity wards (and closing one near me in Nuneaton for lack of money, that's all). Mums will now have to drive 20 miles more to Coventry.

The new Coventry Hospital charges it's own staff (nurses) £9 per day to park to work at there. Patients are also charged with no concessions for disabled people. It has a very large private ward/carpark.

I can't see my Dr at weekends no-more I have to queue at a hospital (Nuneaton, which they want to close down) and meet a complete stranger. In the future, I may have to travel to Coventry for that same anonymous treatment.

Opticians only give free eyechecks to the elderly or those on income support - everyone else pays. There's a token contriubtion to frames and lenses too if you qualify but many do not as the 'qualification' has been reduced over the years.

My GP referred me to hospital last year for physiotherapy. I waited 3 months for an appointment and recevied 4 sessions before the therapist said that's all she could do and if I wanted more to see my GP again...and wait another 3months. I went to a Chiropractor, paids my money - pain gone.

Last year a filing cost me £15, last month it cost me £42 and I was in the chair less than 5 minutes - that's on the NHS, not private and the fee set by the goverment. I can get a private filling for a similar price and have better surroundings and more time spent on me. My wife works at the same NHS dentists and she's recommending I go see a private dentist(!) elsewhere as she feels the dentists are rushing and only counting UDA's - 'twwas the only reason I married her, was for cheap dental treatment. Now that's gone!!.

That's why there is such an explosion in 'private' medical, be it physio, psyhcotherpay, dentists or whatever - there is a demand for it. People can no longer tolerate the poor standards, the production line mentality, the lack of care and resources. Even people with limited incomes are seeking to paying for it themselves as best they can.

The NHS is a wonderful thing. Problem is, it's in crisis, it's dying right in front of us and no-ones doing anything about it. As for dentists, if they didn't go private they'd go abroad or become contestants on Masterchef. Then the problem would be worse, therey'd be no dentists at all. As for the dentists in community centres and what have you, they're just waiting to get enough money to afford their own surgery and go private. These people, like most of society, is ambitious and wants to move on.

sabbykins

kenshaz wrote:

Sabbykins are you stating that those who can avoid private treatment should give up their right to treatment ,and allow it to be used by the poor.

The above doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but what i think you are asking is if those who can 'afford' private treatment should give up their right to treatment, and allow it to be used by the poor?

In a word 'no'.......

I can only speak for myself but i was under an EXCELLENT NHS dentist for many years and he sadly retired. I searched for months for a new NHS dentist and when i found one she was/is SO appalling (i blame funding for the 3 check-ups in 5 minutes she performed) she missed decay, performed shoddy fillings etc and extracted teeth that could have been repaired (on my hubby), I searched high and low for another NHS dentist and couldn't find one. So Ken, do i stay with the psycho-dentist who would neglect my familys teeth , or do i go private?
In a perfect NHS your loyalty is rewarded, but the reality of the NHS is that it is FAR from perfect and is in crisis.
Count yourself VERY VERY lucky that you 1)actually have an NHS dentist, 2) he/she is a good one and can care for your teeth to a satisfactory standard.

You are a very lucky man. Not all of us can say the same.

And i DO begrudge paying twice, but i want to keep my teeth!

sandieb

My excellent dentist took early retirement at the time of the new contracts - the other dentist just upped and went.

A lot of patients have been very unhappy and of course this has made things particularly difficult for the new dental practice which has since been set up under very difficult circumstances.

My last filling cost me £80 as I wanted a "white" filling - quite a hike in cost since last year but I realise I have been having dental treatment "on the cheap" in the past and that I am fortunate in having a professional who has gone through training so that he/she can fix my teeth.

A car problem can cost a lot and I wonder whether we don't worry so much about paying to have our cars fixed/serviced?

Toothsmith

kenshaz wrote:

when he was trained by the NHS

Ken,

If you only get ONE thing into your head - and I know it's asking a lot - But could it PLEASE be that the NHS do not train dentists.

The training of dentists has NOTHING to do with the NHS, although the NHS does get some free treatment from the students who are training!

domdent

dentists are educated by universities

dental students treat patients for free

standard of care for treatment of patients with no natural teeth is preferably with implant supported dentures. These cost a few £thousand to buy and place in patients.

Dental students do not place implants for patients, there is no funding to provide the ideal standard of care.

With an NHS budget of £23.33 per person will we see ideal treatment provided on the NHS ? answer NO.

Anyone who thinks that NHS dentistry is provided to the standards laid down by the Faculty of general dental practioners is sadly misguided.

Over the next few months I will outline the guidlines for different aspects of dental care.

The government will not issue clinical guidlines for NHS dental care.

domdent

http://www.microscopedentistry.com/

please take a look at what can be done for teeth

Toothsmith

kenshaz wrote:

wow does he/she suddenly become extra special and offer superior treatment,living under a delusion,ultimately it is the skill and experience of the individual and believe me it is not a requirement to be private to acquire it.

A few more spaces, and reading back your posts to yourself would pay dividends Kenshaz.

I think the point your getting at here though is that a dentist doesn't suddenly become more skillful the day they stop doing NHS and become private.

And once again, it shows you haven't really grasped the situation.

The NHS is a numbers game. To make enough money to pay the bills, you need to pack in the patients and churn out the treatments.

Treatments that took half an hour to an hour when we were training have to be done much much quicker in NHS practice. (Which is why I find it so ridiculous when you state I was trained by the NHS!! None of my tutors ever held a stopwatch or marked me on 'speed'!)

You need a list of 2000+ patients per dentist to have a chance of breaking even on the NHS, and I know of practices with over 5000.

When you go private, there are always a proportion of people like yourself Ken, who helpfully tell the dentist where to shove his private dentistry, and they generally go off to make some other dentist's life a misery.

This leaves you with anything from 50-80% of the patients you had before.

This is where the dividend kicks in for the loyal patients left behind. They get more TIME.

(This is also why private dentists don't earn any more than NHS ones - we do charge more - but we do less treatments per day).

With time you can do wonderful things. Even you MUST be able to see, Ken that if you have 30 mins to do a fiddly intricate job where before you had 15, or an hour where you had 30 mins before, then that job is going to be BETTER. It's not that you've become more skillful, you are just allowing yourself to USE the skills you have.

You can talk to patients. Put them at their ease. Discuss options. Chat. the whole patient experience is better. Patients will be more relaxed, and a relaxed patient has a MUCH higher pain threshold than on who feels stressed.

Plus, you have spaces in your appointment book where you can put people who ring up with problems! You can usually see them the SAME DAY - not 3 weeks later when you squash them in between a couple of check ups.

On the subject of skills though, with a less crowded appointment book, it is much easier to block off time and actually go on a few courses. It's even better going on a course if you know that when you get back to the practice you can actually put the stuff you've learnt to use! The number of courses I went on whilst I was an NHS dentist knowing that the stuff I was learning WASN'T available on the NHS was really soul destroying at the time!!

This is not rocket science Ken. The private experience is always going to beat the NHS one hands down.

What I want is for the state to quit the pretence that we have a high quality dental service available to everybody on the NHS, to get it's head out of it's own backside and to come up with a fair and equitable system that allows dentists to work to the standard they've been trained to, and has some sort of safety net for the less fortunate in society who cannot afford the cost of that.

I have said before, that my favoured NHS system would be a voucher system for all patients. This would give everybody the same allowance towards dentistry. Those that wanted my sort of dentistry could give me their 'voucher', and I would charge what I needed above that in order to provide the level of care that I do.

Others could choose to provide a more 'cheap & chearful' service for purely the value of the voucher.

There would be a broad enough demand for services at all ends of the market.

Of course this will never come to pass, as it was highlighted a few posts ago, the per capita spend on dentistry is less than £25 a year!!!!

At the moment the scarcity of NHS dentists serves to ration the service. If everybody was REALLY entitled to their 'Bit' it would highlight to everybody just how small their 'bit' is - and the politicians could never have that!



EDIT - Your analysis of me wasn't bad, but I'd say I was from more lower middle class that working class stock! And business man as well as caring professional. But I certainly do have delusions. Not sure if they're of grandure though!

Savvy_Sue

Toothsmith wrote:

But I certainly do have delusions. Not sure if they're of grandure though!

Possibly including the delusion that Ken will appreciate your attempts at educating her/him ... :rotfl:

You convinced me a long time ago. Just took a while to get me out of the NHS! But we're there: DH is off to our new dentist tomorrow to have his tooth extracted, in a relaxed and unhurried atmosphere. I anticipate him feeling a lot happier after his experience than I did after my NHS extraction!

kenshaz

The universities are government funded to provide dentists for the NHS ,so lets clear that point up.
Do dentists leave the universities and set up in private practice ,they become associates in NHS practices.

kenshaz

Savvy_Sue wrote:

Possibly including the delusion that Ken will appreciate your attempts at educating her/him ... :rotfl:

You convinced me a long time ago. Just took a while to get me out of the NHS! But we're there: DH is off to our new dentist tomorrow to have his tooth extracted, in a relaxed and unhurried atmosphere. I anticipate him feeling a lot happier after his experience than I did after my NHS extraction!

I am so confused as to why you owe so much allegiance to private sector,please do not quote your own family medical history ,it is not relevant to the overall situation .I do not know the dentists that you have had experiences with.We are talking about the general population and the need for care for those who are not in the fortunate position to be able to buy time and just want treatment ,not small talk and piped music.