What do you do for dentistry?

[Rolson77]

Just received a letter to say that my dentist is going private. There is not one NHS dentist taking on new patients in the whole city. I work full time but am on universal credit and my son and I haven't been to the dentist for a very long time. Even when we had an NHS dentist they weren't able to offer an appointment as all their NHS dentists left. I can't afford any treatments under denplan. A filling alone is £120+. So wonder what the point would be in even going on denplan. So, is that it? We just don't go to the dentist? I have considered travelling further afield, but just feel like it'll be expensive and a nightmare. The nearest dentist to me taking NHS patients is in London, and the train there would cost at least £80/90 for me and my son.

Feeling deflated. What does everyone do for dentistry?

Oh and I put my extra dental payments on a credit card. Denplan comes from the family pot. Not great but needs must. I am always concerned about when I'll need any extra work, but my dentist isn't a cunt and knows our circumstances, when I needed a tooth extraction they got me in with their part time nhs dentist for free.

Our NHS dental practice wouldn't see patients for routine appointments 2020/2021 then when things went back to "normal" anyone ringing to be seen was told they had been removed from the list, as they hadn't been seen for over x amount of months.

The trick was to develop toothache during this time, which we did as had a sneaking suspicion this would happen.

So we still have an NHS dentist, however, the owner has gone part time, our dentist of 15+ years left to go private, a new dentist has taken over the practice and will take on new private patients only and seems to be going towards more private/cosmetic treatments/photos on IG etc. All the original staff seem to have gone elsewhere.

So who knows where we will be in another year or so. I would try to find a practice offering Denplan, but I've found a lot of them don't use that anymore, offering a practice-own plan that is more expensive instead.

I have a private dentist now because I can afford it and I just pay for my son too so we don't use the NHS.

I know plenty of other people who were children in the 60s and 70s who had similar experiences, although not all as bad as mine.

Many can't afford a private dentist either to fix the harm done to their own teeth or to get their children's teeth even checked.

The people I know are prioritising paying the council tax, food for the day and school shoes in my experience, not botox or holidays.

Treatment should be free or heavily subsidised for those on low incomes.
Everybody else needs to start paying/budgeting to pay for their dental care in full. Universal dental care is dead. RIP.

I can't believe this had happened with dentists, it's a worry about parts of the NHS now that so many medical experts seem to be doing private care in addition to their NHS roles. Unfortunately the only option seems to be to find one further away, far from ideal I know. Could citizens advice help maybe? Xx

We don't routinely, we just wait until something hurts then you can get seen on the NHS. I had a tooth pulled for free (I would have had to pay for a root canal) which was arrange via 111, and my youngest has been seen for cavities by paying £20 for a kids emergency appointment with a private dentist who then referred us to the NHS.

How will this help? If you’re pregnant you still have to pay at a private dentist!

This won't help if you can't find an NHS dentist to start with! Although I have come across people that think any dentist needs to provide free treatment no matter what if they're pregnant. Including extensive cosmetic work.
Had a woman once book in at a fully private practice for a check up and Hygienist (i was the Hygienist). She was given the prices on the phone when she booked and in the confirmation email. She had the check up first and was given a printed quote for what she needed done including replacing a veneer at the front she didn't like. After the check up and Hygienist she went to book the next appointments and when told to pay she refused saying I'm pregnant you need to claim it from the NHS. No amount of explanation that we were a private practice with no NHS contract and besides Hygienist and cosmetic work aren't included anyway etc would help. She just refused to pay. The practice could have tried going down the debt collectors route but for £100 it was easier to write it off. But that meant I worked for free when seeing her. If the patient doesn't pay i don't get paid.

I kept my dentist in the town we used to love in twenty miles away, I managed to get DS in over near here albeit the other side of town, I rang over fifty practices without success and then my work friend was going to hers and I said please ask them if they can take ds and they did. I think as they'd been her dentist for decades and he was a child who just couldn't find a dentist after COVID at two so they squeezed him in. DH and I continued to travel for ours, then DHs closed down, he had toothache the day he took ds for his check up explained and they registered him as DS' parent, the next time I took ds explained that DH and ds were their patients but my dentist was still twenty miles away and they registered me. We've been very lucky.

Quote: ‘NHS dentistry and the NHS in general can be saved with the political will to so. I'm REALLY not well off (income now so low I pay little direct income tax as I'm not much above the threshold), but I'd happily contribute more for better services. It seems to be those at the top who don't accept the extent of their social responsibilities.’

The system needs to be completely revamped so that those most in need can easily access free or reduced dental care. But you can’t keep flogging a dead horse. The good old days of yore are over. The current model of subsidised NHS dental care for all and sundry cannot be sustained. As a high rate taxpayer household, we already pay our fair share of tax for something we cannot access. I don’t want to pay more tax. Sorry.

Dentists have been arguing for decades that the country cannot afford to provide a comprehensive dental service for all.

Most dentists think a core service of fillings , extractions and plastic dentures , would at least mean everyone could access treatment that will keep them out of pain , make it simpler to understand what is available on the NHS , and leave people to pay for treatment that is more complicated.

To put into context we spend around £2.5 billion a year to provide a "universal" dental service providing everything , the most someone will pay in England is £319.10 .

Canada has just set up a service for five years, costing £7.5 billion that will provide subsidised dental treatment where people on very low income and children will pay nothing but most will pay 40% to 60% of the market value of dental treatment and a filling in Canada costs £100 to £250 , a crown £800 . There is no cap on patient charge . Canada has around 50% of the population of the U.K.

We need to decide priorities , in my area children in pain needing a general anaesthetic face a wait of two to three years for treatment , yet 50% of children's dentistry budget is spent on orthodontics (braces).

The payment for NHS dentistry has fallen so low it would take a massive investment just to bring us back to 2006 levels , let alone 1997 levels when Tony Blair promised a dentist for all at the start of the funding crisis.

Forgot to say Canadian scheme is only for those who have an household income under approx £45,000 and have no insurance.

I have a really affordable private dentist. Routine check ups are £40, fillings £110 and they only use white fillings.

I originally switched because my old NHS dentist was costing me a fortune by getting me to have treatments every single check up.

The only way forward is a complete overhaul of the current system: that’s what people need to be advocating for. At the moment the whole system is a complete mess. There seem to be 4 tiers: those who can afford to go private; those who are fortunate enough to already be on the books of an NHS dentist; those who have the luck/motivation/financial resources to find and travel afar to an NHS dentist; and finally, those who are low income/vulnerable and don’t have the luck/money/means for an NHS dentist (and in many cases can’t even afford NHS fees). It’s that latter group that’s really being let down by this shambles of a system.

I see a private dentist and pay monthly via Denplan Care. It is under £20 for me and my daughter is seen via NHS at same practice. I can have an appointment whenever I want and have Xrays, check ups and hygienist regularly.

I have good teeth though and the cost is partly based on the condition. I have had a private dentist since I was 18 and haven’t had any fillings yet (46) so I pay the lowest premium. DH’s teeth are shit and they want a bloody fortune for his so he doesn’t go often and pays as he goes.

If you generally have good teeth, you don't really need to do the denplan and you can just pay as you go. My dentist suggested I'm fine with yearly appointments and six monthly for my DC. My appointment costs £40 and they are £15 each, you will need to pay extra for any x-rays etc but they aren't too expensive if you can go to a cheaper dentist, I think my little x-ray was £20 and DS had a full x-ray at £40.

We travel to a cheaper area of our city for the dentist as the one we found was much cheaper than all the ones near us.

Also, really looking after your teeth will help to reduce long term costs. I use an interdental brush every night, some really brilliant toothpaste tablets and an Oral B electric toothbrush. My dentist was so excited looking at my gums as apparently they now look like 'textbook healthy gums' when she is a lot more used to seeing quite bad teeth.

Our private dentist was also able to refer DS1 to an NHS orthodontist (well, actually the local dental hospital as his teeth are very wiggly), so he will be getting braces on the NHS. I know that is a worry for a lot of people, but braces on the NHS are based on need rather than whether you have an NHS dentist or not.

He just rang up @XenoBitch - he had to travel 30 miles though!

Not true. Some people have crowded mouths with lots of irregular teeth doing badly-behaved things. Some people just have metabolisms that make them more vulnerable to plaque buildup and to gum issues, even when they floss scrupulously; they need the extra cleanings and scrapings. Some people are hit with medical conditions or medical treatments that have knock-on effects on their dental health. Obviously things would be better if more people practiced good dental hygiene at home, but please drop the triumphalist virtue-signaling here and thank your lucky stars for your good dental genes!

Sorry but around 90% of dental treatment is preventable https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/oral-health#:~:text=Overview,tooth%20loss%20and%20oral%20cancers.

You are right some things make dental problems more frequent eg
decay .... dry mouth caused by disease or medication eg antidepressants, or radiotherapy of saliva glands

gum disease .....smoking, alcohol, diabetes and a genetic component

weak teeth........ very rare conditions like amelogenesis imperfecta and more commonly Hypomineralisation

However even with these problems control of diet, improved oral hygiene and use of fluoride will prevent most problems or stop them getting worse. Treatment of gum disease is 90% patient effort , 10% dentist input.

Cleaning and scaling should not be necessary , tartar only forms when plaque has laid , undisturbed, on the tooth for at least 24 hours , in other words if a brush , interdental brush or floss cleaned away that plaque in that 24 hour (or more) period there would be no tartar.

People living where there is hardly any sugar intake (eg in the past Inuits, and large parts of Africa ) had no decay , but once sugar was introduced they developed problems with decay .

Unfortunately in this country we eat far in excess of the recommended daily sugar intake (children even higher) and the average U.K. child eats 7 times a day with many grazing throughout the day. Eating or drinking anything sugary more than three times a day will cause decay.

Here's where the 90% oral problems are preventable came from

"It is also important to remember that around 90% of dental problems are preventable with moderate consumption of sugar, sufficient exposure to fluoride, regular brushing, and routine visits to the dentist (Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2014)."

I go to Budapest. It's fabulous and a quarter of the price

Im not sure where you are getting your information from but the plaque “thing” is much more complex and affects less than 10% of the population. There is growing evidence that it is genetically linked to diabetes and coronary artery disease and a side effect of an over reaction by the immune system( gene mutation) to inflammatory chemicals.

One side effect is that as dentists when we regularly see patients who suddenly develop periodontal disease, there is a strong chance that they also have type 2 diabetes and/or coronary artery disease. I refer all patients to their GP if they present with early perio disease after years of healthy gums.

Just to add, it is possible to have these diseases in isolation. There may be a trigger, environmental (smoking),disease (viral trigger), hormones ( oestrogen) and genetic predisposition.

Around about 1 in 10 people will develop gum disease whether they go to the dentist or not. Those that have regular checks are likely to be caught early and appropriate advice can be given. Even now, despite the advances in medicine and dentistry treatment is 99% oral hygiene at home.

Decay in teeth is probably similar in that some people develop antibodies to the pathogens that initiate demineralisation of enamel. As a result they suffer less decay. A diet high in refined carbohydrates overwhelms the natural defence mechanism so teeth decay faster than the body can defend them.
We see a lot of decay in previously healthy mouths when they have to take longterm immunosuppressants.

Some people can go months without brushing their teeth with very little damage.

A cl an at the dentist has no direct therauputic value. It is carried out to remove calculus that makes home cleaning less effective.

Never had a filling since I started flossing morning and night 30 years ago

An old dentists saying “ only floss the teeth you want to keep”.