The NHS Access Crisis in Dentistry: Speaking at the London Assembly
Last week I was invited to give oral evidence on a panel in front of the Health Committee for the London Assembly about the NHS dental access crisis...
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Me at the London Assembly last week |
What is the London Assembly?
The London Assembly holds the Mayor and his advisors to account by publicly examining policies and programmes through committee meetings, plenary sessions, site visits and investigations. The Mayor (currently Sadiq Khan) should respond to the motions of the Assembly and their recommendations.
The Mayor must also consult Assembly Members before producing his strategies and the multi-billion pound budget for the GLA (Great London Authority) Group.
As part of the assembly there are different committees - the one I was invited to was the Health Committee who have chosen to investigate NHS dentistry.
What are the Problems in London?
Many would think that the capital of England would not have issues with accessing NHS healthcare with it's wealth of workforce, hospitals and medical/dental schools. That certainly was the case when I first qualified in 2014 and moved down to London. My first job as an associate took several months to secure, even though I was going out of my way to get a role that would involve weekend work. There were countless job ads in BDJ jobs and when going for interviews, it was common to be part of a cohort of candidates in double digits.
Fast forward to the present day and things couldn't be more different. I am seeing this in my role in a tertiary care hospital: patients being admitted with life threatening dental sepsis because there weren't able to find an NHS dentist to treat their dental infection, long waiting lists of patients referred from other sectors of healthcare, patients who cannot have their life-saving heart operations because they are awaiting a dental check.
There is also huge variation across London. In some boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, the borough where I had my first ever job as a dentist, only 25% of adults and 33% of children have accessed a dentist in recent years. This is compared to 60 % of children seeing an NHS dentist in Hounslow.
The access crisis is affecting all sectors of NHS dentistry as general practice is the base level of the pyramid of dental care. Without an adequate service, the whole pyramid falls down.
What did I Call the Mayor of London to do to solve the issue?
I called on him to:
- Put pressure on central government to pursue contract reform and get rid of the UDA
- Influence ICBs to ringfence the dental budget so that clawback is used in dentistry and not absorbed into wider healthcare budgets
- Implement a supervised toothbrushing programme in primary schools which is cost effective and reduces the burden of disease in children
To read more, I have also posted a blog on the BDA website here.
The London Assembly are also seeking responses from dental professionals, organisations and patients and would welcome your response here.
To watch the recording of the panel session see below.
So what do you think about the access to NHS Dentistry in London? Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
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