What are the limits of NHS Dentistry?

Tao81

Well I visited my NHS dentist yesterday and asked about their provision for descaling and polishing via a hygienist, they informed me that I would have to pay privately for descaling and polish, £37 for 30 mins treatment, as they claim they cannot get a hygienist under the NHS and therefore I have to pay private fees.

Toothsmith

If you NEED a scaling & polish, then as an NHS patient you are entitled to it on the NHS.

How the practice organise this is up to them, but they must do the treatment, even if it's with the dentist doing the clean and polish.

It all depends on whether you NEED the clean up.

I would suggest though that there are very few people who can go more than 12-18 months between good pofessional cleans.

Most people I come across need them every 6 months, and I have several patients on 4 monthly polishes with the hygienist.

It all depends on how you define 'need'.

Toothsmith

elisebutt65 wrote: »

I think though, that something weird is going on. When the new contract came in - we could only see our dentist once every 12 months but this August after our check ups, he said we could go back to seeing him more often so we're going in March.?????

This is because the DoH decided to misrepresent a NICE report that said that 6 monthly check ups shouldn't be set in stone, and that recall intervals should be based more on patient need.

It said that there were some people who could go up to a couple of years between check ups, whilst others should probably be seen every 4 or even 3 months.

A lot of good dental practices were already doing this anyway - although for the vast majority of people, 6 months is probably the correct interval.

This was taken by the Department of health, and turned into " Dentists are seeing patients far too often, and from now on, you will be seen yearly."

They thought this would free up a whole load of dentist time, and mean a lesser number of NHS dentists could see twice as many NHS patients.

They set the treatment 'targets' for dentists who stayed within the NHS at levels that assumed they'd been seeing patients 6 monthly, and altered it to reflect dentists seeing people 12 monthly.

This has continued to cause real problems for dentists - particularly those that were already varying their recall intervals.

Some of the better PCTs have tried to address this issue - which might be why you've now gone back to 6 monthly. Very many others have done nothing about it though - and they have dentists in their area with serious 'target' problems.

Billieblob

The references Toothsmith is alluding to are:

http://www.nice.org.uk/nicemedia/live/10951/29470/29470.pdf


and:

Davenport C et al (2001) The clinical and cost-effectiveness of routine dental checks. West Midlands Health Assessment Technology Group, The University of Birmingham.

The latter states:

"[the authors found] no high quality evidence to either support or refute the current practice of encouraging six-monthly dental checks in children and adults"

Don't believe the hype when the DoH tells you to visit your dentist every two years. That is NOT what Davenport et al said!