Disgusted By Dentists Behaviour!!!

[Windchangeface]

We moved home week before the pandemic and then non of the dentists were taking on patients.

This made me very nervous, I kept an eye out to jump as soon as they opened up.

Well...as of a few weeks ago 3/5 practises within a 15 mile radius of us put up notices on their websites ‘taking on new patients’ great I rang to register me, DH and small DS. But oh no, they aren’t taking on any NHS patients only private or Denplan! (Would cost us a minimum of £50 per month and I’m currently pregnant so should be free anyway). The receptionists at all 3 massively tried to sell me Denplan and actually made me feel like a total sponge for asking about NHS.

‘Most families prefer Denplan’ erm sorry Shannon but I highly doubt ‘most’ families prefer to spend £50+ per month on something that should be £20 a visit for them and free for their kids!

One of the receptionists even told me (in a very snooty tone) ‘no we aren’t taking NHS patients we’ve got enough of those) another stated ‘we’ve met our quota for NHS so are only taking paying patients’.

Given DH is a Dr who spends all day looking after hospital patients free of charge I’m at a loss to understand why dentists feel they’re above the NHS.

Horrible, elitist attitude excluding people who can’t afford to pay from adequate healthcare and forcing those who can to pay high premiums they shouldn’t have to!

According to a recent NHS survey, a junior doctor can earn as little as £23,448 pa. They can work 50+ hours a week which limits their partner’s earning potential if they have children.

The average nurse salary is £25,578. No one would be telling OP to pay up and go private if her DH was a nurse (and with good reason too!)

Obviously a doctor’s earnings will continue to rise. Glassdoor says the average salary of a London doctor is around £50k. But you can’t spend what you haven’t yet earned.

Dentistry is a very skilled profession and so command a good wage. They cannot support the wages if there are not enough private patients. Your situation is unfortunate but you need to get over it.

What on Earth are you talking about. Junior docs earn enough to get the family a bloody check up whilst you keep searching for an NHS dentist in the meantime.

I know family are doctors but you are not on benefits - I assume paid for dental work is for people on very low income or universal credit.

I assume you (and everyone else having a go at OP) only use private GPs?

If not, what is the difference, in law, between the entitlement to see an NHS dentist and an NHS GP?

(How they are funded is neither here nor there, that's between them and the NHS and government. It's not patients jobs to know or care about that.)

(FWIW I think anyone not on benefits should pay the full cost of GP and dentist appointments. These are not the kind of things that need to be funded by social insurance. Though this is more the case for GP appointments than dentistry, given fully private dentistry would have bigger and more variable bills. Having at least half the patients pay full cost for GPs would probably create enough of a free market that the problem of not being able to get a GP appointment would be solved permanently.)

Confused why people are acting like NHS dentists aren't a thing. I've moved dentists 3 times in 5 years (uni, job relocation, house move) and always got a new NHS dentist first try in my new area...

I still pay the cover cost but it's definitely cheaper than private - especially as I only go once a year bc I've literally never once had a problem with my teeth.

@Mistlewoeandwhine

I agree with you OP. Dental care should be free on the NHS for everyone just like other healthcare. If we’ve got billions to spend on nukes and for the government to waste on contracts to their pals, we’ve got the money to take care of people’s health in this country.

Yes, but it hasn't been free since 1951.

I strongly believe dentistry should be provided on the NHS in the same way as all other medical treatment. Happy to pay a nominal amount for my checkup and basic dental work, as for prescriptions and eye checks, but why on earth should we have to pay hundreds of pounds a year if we have the bad luck to have a cracked tooth which needs treatment, as I've had a couple of times in the last few years? Problems with teeth can lead to other health problems, e.g. sepsis if infection is left unchecked. A dental check up can be an early sign of serious problems, e.g. oral cancer. Dental problems can be excruciatingly painful. The NHS should be able to provide 24/7 dental care in the same way as for any other medical emergency.

We should be funding the NHS properly out of taxes and National Insurance. Dentists should be able to make a decent living from their work, just as all other highly trained and skilled professionals doing essential work should.

One way of raising the extra taxes required would be to fund and support HMRC to go after multinationals and billionaires who don't pay their fair share of taxes.

Another way would be to increase wages and close the pay gap between richest and poorest. It's only in the last 20 years or so that it's become accepted that lower paid individuals and families will not be able to live on what the adults earn. Tax credits may have seemed a great idea at first but they let employers off the hook. The minimum wage isn't enough to live on. Employers should be paying a living wage. If that means prices go up, so be it.

The flipside is that adequately paid workers pay more tax and NI and that funds our public services better - getting us back to dentistry. It's a scandal that many can't afford to go to the dentist. It takes us back to the awful days before the NHS when the poor only saw a dentist when in extremis.

The stark reality is that dentist surgeries couldn’t survive on NHS income alone. They have to have private patients to receive the income to keep up to date on modern techniques and equipment. It would be good if there were NHS centres for dentistry that did that and only that and then at least everyone would get a chance to be registered. I can’t see it happening as I doubt the government has money to do it. My advice would be to get in and get seen if you can possibly afford it and once you’ve got your foot in the door ask to be transferred to their NHS (waiting) list.

Ignore the condescending replies, OP. We moved in November and can't get signed up with a local dentist, either. We certainly can't afford to pay to go privately.

Obviously I don't blame dentists for not taking NHS patients. If they aren't being paid enough to make it worthwhile, that's the governments fault. A fault I think they should resolved by dropping the pretence that we are all entitled to subsidised dentistry.

I have a few friends in dentistry.

The nhs "deal" from years ago was very poor for them. Guessing that's why many now don't bother.

Unfortunately general dentists have been massively hit by the pandemic. The nhs only allows dentist to see a certain number of patients each year and most patients now need at least 10-15 minutes of fallow time if not longer for some patients anything that produced an aresol is longer; More time to clean down in between patients. Some practices are really struggling to stay afloat with the nhs demand.

The practice I work at our NHS waiting list for
Ortho treatment is almost 3 years but private patients can be seen within 4 weeks.

What they have told you is the truth unfortunately.

@Lochmorlich

The mark of a civilised nation is how it decides what is worth funding. Imo dentistry should be available on the NHS that everyone pays for, its not free. The brits are renowned for their awful teeth. And dentists earn more than doctors. My dgs has to go privately as the NHS dentist just changed to private overnight. They tried to charge £58 for a 10 minute check up. My ds queried the price and they halved it, apparently it was a mistake.

In France the government pay 70%. We pay insurance top up for health, optional, and get the full amount back.

Brits are stereotyped as having bad teeth, but we actually have healthier teeth in average than the average American. We are ranked as having the second best dental health in the world, just after Denmark...

Well, that was in 2017, sorry, now we are 5th, but still well above France

Really shocked at some of the replies in here. NHS dental care is a right in the same way other NHS treatment is.

Our NHS dentist has refused to see any of his NHS patients since the pandemic began. He wouldn't even see my husband for an emergency. He ended up phoning the NHS helpline and they made him an emergency appointment with another local dentist.

Orthodontic care for kids on the NHS seems to be completely halted in our area. This is bad when the treatment is time critical ( jaw realignment has to be done while the jaw is still developing)

We've had to make the decision to pay for private treatment even though DD qualifies for NHS treatment. That's £3.5k we need to pay and thankfully we have it in savings - others are not so fortunate meaning their DC will miss out treatment.

We also had to pay £4K last year because our DD's NHS eye surgery was postponed for "at least a year" after being cancelled during the first week of the first lockdown. Again thankfully we had the savings to go private but it really brings home the importance of free healthcare for all.

I’ve just googled junior doctor pay and i didn’t realise how low pay started. I’m shocked that you go in at about £23k, with an average of between £30-£40k. Depending on where you live in the country, that isn’t mega money at all.

We have an nhs dentist, it was my dental practise growing up, but when I married in to the military, we followed the flag and moved around the Country. I was advised that as we planned to move back to my home town eventually, to keep my nhs dentist. I used to have to travel 100s of miles home for treatment.
I think it is dreadful that people can not get an nhs dentist and have to pay private fees. I can’t see the difference between having a broken leg and a broken tooth, both will cause pain and both need sorting. Why is it fee to get the leg fixed, but you have to pay for your tooth.

I find it really sad that a woman has started a thread about this and has been called entitled and other posters have insinuated that she is trying to sponge of the stage because she and her children are Legally entitled to nhs dental treatment and yet no dentist will take them on as patients!

Don't be blaming the dentists.

Blame the government who made it not worth their while in seeing nhs patients.

I'm sure if the finances for GP's surgeries heads the same way, we can kiss goodbye to nhs funded GP appointments too.

These people are highly skilled with massive uni debts and overheads of their practice to consider. They aren't running a charity and they were shafted by the government.

Honestly OP ignore the people being nasty. Dentistry should be free or a nominal fee for all- they are often the first to spot and refer oral cancers and other serious oral medical problems- some cardiac disease is caused by gum disease. The NHS then picks all of this up, not dentists.

I'm a doctor and we did almost nothing about teeth/oral disease in medical school and only picked a lot up by chance working a maxfacs job during training. We rely on dentists.

If society ends up with most people having to pay large sums for a check up rather than the nominal £20 (which is still expensive for some) then many people won't go for a regular check up and will wait until they have pain or a problem. The NHS will end up paying a hell of a lot more dealing with late cancer, cardiac, and other systemic disease presentations. Dentists are like GPs of the teeth. They are there to spot and refer. We need problems spotted and referred early, and not just for those lucky enough to have an NHS dentist, or who can afford a dental plan.

I'm sorry that you can't access one for your family.

Also I feel that I have to say this every other thread when people assume doctors are loaded: newly qualified doctors have to work 48hours/week for a salary of £28k. NQ nurses work 36hours for £24k. If we worked the same hours as a nurse we would earn £21k. Their hourly rate is higher than ours at the start. Would you be saying nurses were loaded if they had to work an extra 12 hours per week on top of their full time job? Would anybody think it was okay? Whatever doctors earn- take off 25% and compare that to your average 37hour week. For the job they do it's an absolute steal for the country. If you accept that nurses work reasonable hours and the NHS gets a full time nurse for that, then you have to accept the NHS essentially gets 1 free full time doctor, for every 3 doctors they employ. And no- not many consultants or GPs earn £100,000. Most earn 50-70k, and also work long hours. If you want to work "part time" ie... 37hours a week, you'll be on 75% of that.

Rant over. YANBU.

We need to recongise that its not free everything just because...

The NHS is more and more in demand, that last time I was at A&E many years ago the chap in the next room who was clearly a regular with his daughter was kicking off demanding paracetamol. I know there has been some attempt to stop people trying to get EVERYTHING for free but not sure what success it had in the end.
I went for my vaccine a few weeks ago. There were some masks in the front hall and the couple in front of my saw the basket full of masks and promptly scooped up almost all of them.

I think overall the NHS needs a massive overall. Its not free everything for everyone. Everyone thinks everyone else needs to pay more tax.

I wouldnt have an issue with paying a small amount to see a GP with exceptions for the very low paid but just because you have children which presumably you made a choice to do that you get everything for free.

I was feeling some sympathy till I read your DH is a doctor. So you can afford to pay.

Don't have a pet then... vets charge just as much as dentists. The existence of the NHS obscures the real cost of treatment. It's not free, just paid for through taxation.

As an nhs dentist I find this hugely insulting. I am fully booked but am just one woman. There aren’t enough of us and they nhs won’t comission more but instead of being valued for doing a job few would want to do we are demonised for not splitting ourselves in 5

I know family are doctors but you are not on benefits - I assume paid for dental work is for people on very low income or universal credit

Christ, you can tell where you are in the money food chain if you think stuff like that. Are council houses free in your head as well?

I also think NHS dentistry will be a thing of the past soon enough. Accelerated by the pandemic no doubt. I feel sorry for dentists. They seem to have been royally screwed this past year.

If we have a contract with the nhs for a certain amount of treatment we can’t just go over it. They set the limits and we do the work. So write to your MP rather than complaining on mumsnet

PPs are right that it's the government's fault more than dentists. But you are correct in principle that it should be more widely available.