If there are no NHS dentists, where's the money?

[Snowchance]

This is a genuine question, we're I live there are no NHS dentists and I have seen a lot of similar posts. So if the government have a budget for dental treatment for each person which used to be 6/12 month check ups and then any treatment needed and you would pay a minimal amount to this. Then we're is that money now. Because obviously it's not go on our check ups or treatment.

It is used to pay the deficit in other areas of the health service. It is not ringfenced for dentistry.
84,% of practices are unable to hit their targets so have to pay back money and this is also used elsewhere in the health service.

In my mind I thought well if there no NHS dentists surely they are saving that money, which would have been going to those services.

The doctors strikes have created billions of pounds of budget pressure on the NHS , the money unspent on dentistry will go towards covering that deficit

No and haven't for years.
Spending on health is controlled by CCGs , clinical commissioning groups and in the whole of England not one dentist sits on one.

It's not that dentistry is at the back of the queue for health care spending, it's so far behind it can't even see the queue.

Oh ffs! You blame doctors for the chaotic shambles of our NHS???! And can we have the evidence that money allocated to dentist services is going into other areas of the NHS please?

Last figures I could see was there was a £400,000,000 underspend per year in dentistry. This is practices handing back their contracts and 84% of dentists cannot achieve their unrealistic targets so have to repay clawback money . This leaves practices facing repaying large sums and a further pressure to leave NHS practice or shut up shop.

https://www.gdpuk.com/news/latest-news/4630-ring-fence-blown-over#:~:text=The%20Prime%20Minister%20had%20also,exclusively%20for%20frontline%20dental%20services.”

in reality those working in dentistry have seen "ring fenced" money disappear for many years.
There is a legal requirement for health authorities to stay in the black. This has not happened in many areas and unspent dental budgets have been used to put a thumb in the dyke.

In a similar note, with no NHS dentists and some practices turning private although some will pay for this service, surely the people that leave the practice and cannot they must still be struggling business wise.
Alright private dentist treatment is expensive but I do wonder if that is enough income to cover the patients they lose.

I also wonder, if there was an NHS revolution of services and NHS dentistry was restored what would we be willing to lose from another part of the NHS budget that would/could fund this?

For example, not prescribing over the counter medicines? Paying for rehab equipment like crutches etc?

Hypothetical but I do wonder what people would be happy to comprise on elsewhere to get nhs dentistry as let's face it, although the budget for health has increased in other aspects it will never be enough to save what has been lost.

One of the reasons dentists turn private is to spend more time with patients and get off the hamster wheel.
A target for a practice turning private is to retain, roughly, a third of its patients .

This actually enables dentists to spend the time they should treating people and also allows them time to eg go to the loo and have a lunch break.

@Lollygaggle that's interesting, since my practice has been private (2years) I have seen no change in my time spent with the dentist for check up or treatments. They always seem pretty rushed//hectic.

Only my experience though. I wonder if anyone else sees the benefits of this?

Dentistry has only ever been funded to serve around 50% of the population. This is because only 50% ever attended a dentist.

In the 90s the government changed the contract to encourage dentists to register patients and expand the number seen. As a result more money was spent on dentistry and the following year this "overspend " for seeing more patients ,as requested , was clawed back from dentists.

Dental technology has leapt forward but at a very significant financial cost. More people are keeping teeth for longer but those teeth need more and costly interventions to keep them .

The U.K. is virtually the only country that provides , or pretends to provide , a comprehensive social dentistry for all. Most other countries that have similar health set ups provide limited services for children or the vulnerable (ie no braces ) and insurance backed services for everyone else.

The part of the NHS that sucks up most of the funding is hospitals. Primary care - GPs, pharmacy, optometry and dentistry have been starved of money. Of that list GPs have been more of a priority. But all their NHS contracts have been squeezed and they are struggling. If you add in local government going bankrupt and the underfunding of social care it's all a big old crisis. We don't spend as much on the NHS as many other developed countries but with the state of the economy and cost of living crisis it's hard to see how we can pay more taxes to invest more.