Extra 68,000 urgent dentist appointments announced

More than 9,500 appointments have been held in 10 months for patients with urgent dental pain

Dental patients in the East of England will have access to almost 70,000 new, urgent appointments, the government announced.

Health Minister Stephen Kinnock directed health bosses across the region to deliver tens of thousands urgent care appointments, in a bid to end 'DIY dentistry'.

He said: "We promised we would end the misery faced by hundreds of thousands of people unable to get urgent dental care. Today we're delivering on that commitment."

NHS dentistry in the East had been described as a "lottery" with government figures showing one in four patients were unable to see a dentist in the past two years.

Campaign group Toothless in England welcomed the news but said it had "reservations".

Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board (ICB) is set to offer the most urgent care appointments and it had a target of 21,000. Suffolk and North East Essex ICB has a target of 15,000 and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB is set to deliver 14,000.

In Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes, the number of additional urgent appointments is 6,000, with similar figures in Mid and South Essex and Hertfordshire and West Essex.

A separate pilot has already been running in Suffolk and North East Essex, to get those with on-the-day needs into a practice.

The Dental Priority Access and Stabilisation Service (DPASS) has held more than 9,500 appointments in the past 10 months, at 19 practices, leading to fewer accident and emergency presentations, it said.

DPASS was set up as a collaboration between the Suffolk and North East Essex ICB, the Practice Plus Group and dental practices.

In the area, the 111 service can receive up to 3,000 calls per month for dental pain, according to Belinda White, regional manager for the Practice Plus Group. But call handlers had limited options because of the low number of practices able to see NHS patients.

'Terrible position'

"We have had patients who have rung us threatening self-harm and suicide, because of the pain they're in," Ms White said.

"That is a terrible position for the patient and it's distressing for our staff team.

"Since we've come into place there's a massive change in the options we have for patients who have got an urgent dental requirement. Bringing together these partners and putting the patient in the middle… it's a really beautiful thing."

Those who have been treated under the urgent care pilot include patients with broken crowns, tooth loss abscesses and gum disease.

Professor Nicholas Barker said those in urgent dental pain should use the DPASS service

Nicholas Barker, clinical lead for dentistry for the Suffolk and North East Essex ICB said: "About 90% attend with fairly urgent tooth pain, it's probably one of the worst pains for humankind.

"Because of Covid and lesser access to dental care, then disease (is) built over a while.

"Services such as DPASS are getting us to a situation where we're back to status quo......The tap is turning on and we're able to get people through."

Ten months into the 18-month pilot, Prof Barker also said there were now fewer presentations for dental pain in local Accident and Emergency departments, but that much more work must be done on prevention.

DPASS appointments, he said, could also give patients access to the "whole dental team" including hygienists and dental therapists to stabilise problems, meaning it helped prevent crisis in the future.

Labour MP for Norwich North, Alice Macdonald, welcomed the news of the appointments for her area.

"People have been struggling for too long to get basic dental care and this announcement will go some way to alleviating the issues for those awaiting urgent care," she added.

'Wait and see'

Mark Jones said the announcement was "just news" and he was unsure how the appointments would be delivered

Mark Jones, co-founder of Toothless in England, and before that Toothless in Suffolk, welcomed the announcement.

However, he had reservations.

"It will make a huge difference for those lucky enough to still have an NHS practice in their town or local to them... but there are so few practices offering NHS dental services in Suffolk and beyond," he said.

"There's only so many emergency appointments a practice can do in one day. We'll have to see how sustainable that is."

Mr Jones said he would have to "wait and see" how the appointments would be delivered.

"I felt low and withdrawn"

Patient Caroline Poole said that without the service she would have lost five teeth

Caroline Poole, 56, got an appointment after three of her teeth broke and she was quoted £2,000 to get them fixed.

"It was getting quite worrying because I'd already had two extracted and the work that was being repaired was breaking again, I thought this can't be right," she said.

"I was really getting stressed, I felt low and withdrawn, I really had to think about what I was able to eat.

"I came here and saw a dentist called Beth who was amazing, it was confirmed it wasn't cosmetic and I had the work done.

"It restored my faith in the dentists. My teeth are fine and I feel brilliant now."

Priority groups for DPASS include the homeless, those with SEN needs, dementia patients and those with high dental risk.

The minister of State for Care said: "NHS dentistry has been left broken after years of neglect, with patients left in pain without appointments, or queueing around the block just to be seen.

"Thanks to this intervention, patients across the East of England will benefit from thousands more emergency appointments.

"Through our Plan for Change, this government will rebuild dentistry – focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients. This will take time, but today marks an important step towards getting NHS dentistry back on its feet."