Woman's anger at 96 calls to dental phone line

Liz Lewis said she gave up after making more than 90 calls to try and get an appointment

A woman from Shropshire says she gave up trying to get an emergency dentist appointment after 96 attempts to call the hotline.

Liz Lewis, from Clungunford, said she was suffering with severe toothache and called the Dental Advice Line for Shropshire and Telford and Wrekin on 30 January because her own dentist was ill.

But she said the phone line kept going dead, so she had to find a private dentist and pay £200 to have a tooth extracted.

Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust said it could find no fault on the line, but said demand was highest on Monday mornings.

'High volume of calls'

Ms Lewis said she did not go to the dentist in lockdown because she felt other people had more of a need because she had false teeth, but she began to have toothache about two weeks ago.

“I phoned my dentist. They only work on a Monday and a Thursday and she was off poorly and they put me in touch with dental advice [phone line] which is the phone call we made to Shrewsbury,” she said.

“Anyway couldn’t get them, 96 times trying, and [I] gave up in the end and phoned all round….96 times we tried. I’ve got it written down.

“It was just saying ‘we’re experiencing a very high volume of calls, thank you for your call, goodbye’. That was it is, cut off straight away.

“It was over about two hours. In the end I just said.. give up, give up, let’s phone round a dentist and to be fair they were very good – although you would be for nearly £200. I had to go private in the end."

She said the tooth was now feeling ok after treatment.

A BBC investigation last year found nine in 10 NHS dental practices across the UK were not accepting new adult patients

Ms Lewis said there were fewer NHS dentists left at her surgery now and claimed a lack of money was affecting NHS resources.

"I had got the money in my purse what about the next [person] that’s going in there that hasn’t got £84 to be looked at?"

A BBC investigation last year found nine in 10 NHS dental practices across the UK were not accepting new adult patients for treatment under the health service, with a third of 200 council areas not taking on adult NHS patients.

At the time, the government said it had made an extra £50m available "to help bust the Covid backlogs" and that improving NHS access was a priority.

In a statement the Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust said the advice line was set up in June 2022 and gave people access to urgent dental care, and would look into the issue further once it had received more details from Ms Lewis.

“We have reviewed the call records for the date in question and there were no faults with the line and we received no additional complaints," it said.

"On calling the Dental Advice Line callers are placed in a queue to receive a clinician led triage. At peak times such as Monday morning when demand is highest, the maximum queue length may be exceeded resulting in the call ending.

" Going forward we will look at reviewing the maximum queue length applied to the Dental Advice Line, and will look at adjusting the welcome message to advise patients that at peak times of between 8am-10am there may be significant waits for care and advice."