NHS Dentistry as we know it ‘gone for good’

tripleheader said:
I'm really not sure what you can do to stop Dentists going private. Unless of course you make it some sort of a legal obligation that they have to fill a certain quota of NHS patients if they want to 'practice' here. They could of course train more dentists under the NHS under long term contracts, best of luck with that.
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Could always try paying them properly, but that's against the ethos of this government.
 
There are lots of misconceptions in this thread that are entirely understandable with the horse****, misinformation and prejudice around the subject. However, to really briefly summarise the issue, it is 99.9% the current nhs contract that is to blame. The contract that has been deemed not fit for purpose since it was implemented over 15 years ago.

As I side note, I had 2.5 hours worth of patients not turn up today (NHS). Reception turned away loads of people saying we are fully booked. I am self employed. There is no way on implementing any form of penalty for missed appointments. Yet I could have seen roughly 10 emergencies today but turned them all away not knowing people wouldn’t show up.

This is a common occurrence.
 
BorrisiaTeeth said:
There are lots of misconceptions in this thread that are entirely understandable with the horse****, misinformation and prejudice around the subject. However, to really briefly summarise the issue, it is 99.9% the current nhs contract that is to blame. The contract that has been deemed not fit for purpose since it was implemented over 15 years ago.

As I side note, I had 2.5 hours worth of patients not turn up today (NHS). Reception turned away loads of people saying we are fully booked. I am self employed. There is no way on implementing any form of penalty for missed appointments. Yet I could have seen roughly 10 emergencies today but turned them all away not knowing people wouldn’t show up.

This is a common occurrence.
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So can you briefly explain what the problem is with the NHS contract.
As for people missing appointments, can you not remove patients who do not turn up without reason? I get a reminder of appointemnts. If a patient can't be bothered why should you be. I know it's a bad thing to think or even say that, but some people just don't give a f@@k and should be told to go elsewhere for their treatment.
 
Dental tourism is going to become a big thing I'd imagine. I'm not getting on but I still worry about stuff like this in the future. I'll be getting myself into a decent dentist over here while it's still reasonable and getting my gnashers up to scratch.
 
tripleheader said:
So can you briefly explain what the problem is with the NHS contract.
As for people missing appointments, can you not remove patients who do not turn up without reason? I get a reminder of appointemnts. If a patient can't be bothered why should you be. I know it's a bad thing to think or even say that, but some people just don't give a f@@k and should be told to go elsewhere for their treatment.
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I can’t ‘briefly’ explain that, and I think I did on a previous thread so I’ll have a look and copy paste.

As for missed apts, yes, we can block patients. However we have been chronically understaffed for years. There are 5 dentists worth of patients registered yet two of us. No matter how many we block for missing appointments there are more registered at the practice. We would essentially have to block 3/5 patients before we had free spaces.

We provide a text reminder the day before and reception manually call any appointment over 20 mins long to confirm the day before. They still don’t turn up. We even get people who booked an emergancy appointment that day not turn up.

Also, a lot of the DNAs (did not attend) are under 16 - they don’t pay so parents don’t care and we are reluctant to block children unless extreme case (not really their fault) Goes down as a ‘was not brought’ rather than did not attend.

Despite all this, to repeat the contract is by far the issue. Hopefully that just provides a bit of insight into life on the shop floor.
 
tripleheader said:
So can you briefly explain what the problem is with the NHS contract.
As for people missing appointments, can you not remove patients who do not turn up without reason? I get a reminder of appointemnts. If a patient can't be bothered why should you be. I know it's a bad thing to think or even say that, but some people just don't give a f@@k and should be told to go elsewhere for their treatment.
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The simple answer is that the contract is not fit for purpose - it does not compensate dentists for the work they do. You should have easily been able to find that for yourself.
 
NYboro said:
The simple answer is that the contract is not fit for purpose - it does not compensate dentists for the work they do. You should have easily been able to find that for yourself.
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I actually wanted to hear it from somebody in the job what he saw as the underlying issues with the contract. Saying it's not fit for purpose doesn't tell me anything. And saying they are not paid enough could be an answer most of the working population would give particulaly if the government are the paymasters.
 
tripleheader said:
I actually wanted to hear it from somebody in the job what he saw as the underlying issues with the contract. Saying it's not fit for purpose doesn't tell me anything. And saying they are not paid enough could be an answer most of the working population would give particulaly if the government are the paymasters.
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It's easy enough to find if you really care.
 
BorrisiaTeeth said:
I can’t ‘briefly’ explain that, and I think I did on a previous thread so I’ll have a look and copy paste.

As for missed apts, yes, we can block patients. However we have been chronically understaffed for years. There are 5 dentists worth of patients registered yet two of us. No matter how many we block for missing appointments there are more registered at the practice. We would essentially have to block 3/5 patients before we had free spaces.

We provide a text reminder the day before and reception manually call any appointment over 20 mins long to confirm the day before. They still don’t turn up. We even get people who booked an emergancy appointment that day not turn up.

Also, a lot of the DNAs (did not attend) are under 16 - they don’t pay so parents don’t care and we are reluctant to block children unless extreme case (not really their fault) Goes down as a ‘was not brought’ rather than did not attend.

Despite all this, to repeat the contract is by far the issue. Hopefully that just provides a bit of insight into life on the shop floor.
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Thanks for that insight. It appears to be a no win position unless you downsize your practice and de-select patients who repeatedly fail to turn up or the government compensate you for this.
When my previous dentist retired and his practice was taken over there was going to be a selection process on who they decided would remain as NHS. I was not happy with this as I'd been with the same practice for 30 years. I now have Denplan(my wife was already on that at another practice) and have peace of mind it costs me 50p a day for this.
 
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/40901/documents/199172/default/

This gives some good detail. It seems on the face of it as a totally mismanaged situation over a long period of time. Having read that I can see why we are now at a point of no return. Either the fundamental NHS universal offer has to significantly change, or there a complete redraw of the contract, the funding, ethos and scrutiny of dental system, training/staff retention etc.

The damage is already done in many ways. We’ve now essentially got a lottery for NHS services, many people moved privately but yet contribute the same to the system, and many people doing without and will inevitably end up in more costly secondary health services. It would almost be better being means tested system for NHS treatment as it is, at least there would be some element of fairness to that.

It’s hard to see the political will from the existing government to resolve the situation in the remaining time of this parliament.
 
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