To be worried about dentists

[LaceWingMother]

Specifically the state of the NHS and dental treatment.

In the late twentieth century, you could move house and simply register with the local NHS dentist.

However, nowadays they're like gold dust.

It worries me that thousands of children are suffering because of this.

How did the country get into this state?

"How did the country get into this state?"

Maybe because people don't look after their teeth and expect the NHS to sort them out?

However I can't understand why dentistry and opticians are not part of the NHS. Surely if they were integrated into heath centres there would be a huge saving in administration; obscure health problems would be quickly and efficiently diagnosed? This separation seems old fashioned, inefficient and poor for patient care

Putting dentists in centres (dental access centres) has been tried before.

The problem is because dentists are paid piecemeal dental surgeries are run incredibly efficiently , the NHS gets a lot of bang for their buck. The practice owner will often do all of the admin a manager might do, a lot of the repairs and staff also do a lot of maintainance.

A practice doing NHS work is paid so poorly that it ends up subsidising NHS work from its private income. https://www.bda.org/media-centre/nhs-dentistry-treasury-now-no1-roadblock-to-saving-service/

Two of my aquaintances have given up their NHs contracts this year because they lost 6 figures on their contracts last year.

So in today’s figures the average spent , per person, per year on NHS dentistry is £36. When dental access centres were used more than a decade ago the average cost to the NHS per person treated was £450.

Where it costs a minimum of £140 an hour just to run one room in a dental practice you can see why a dental practice loses money.

on top of this the funding has not kept up with inflation for decades. Oh and last years fee increase which doesn’t even keep up with dental inflation , which was due April 1st last year still hasn’t been paid. When it does perhaps it can help cover staff national insurance increases.

No government will ever increase the money enough to properly fund NHS dentistry or make the difficult political choices to fund a core service of essentials . It’s easier to cut funding year by year and let the “greedy dentists” take the blame for pulling out of NHS when they do that , go bust or close down like BUPA did when they closed 80 dental surgeries .

Op, many dentists have a plan, you pay monthly, it is worth shopping around. Mine is way cheaper than a monthly manicure or a Sky package. We have to accept that the NHS is never going to be able to provide us with cheap dental treatment.
We also have to learn to take good care of our teeth.

My practise inevitably the dentists go private (they are good that they always keep one nhs dentist)
Talking to each one. They are deeply unsatisfied with the treatment they can give on nhs, there isn't enough time allocated for appointments and they feel they can't give quality care plus they work at a cash loss quite a bit of the time for the work they do.
Iv finally bit the bullet and went private as I adore my dentist and couldnt face moving to a new person again.

Id happily pay dental insurance tbh if it covered all the costs and kids braces etc

My NHS dentist is brilliant and they still take on new patients.

I’ve stuck with them for years and got my child registered asap. We never miss an appointment as most don’t have a dentist because of not bothering to go.

However I can't understand why dentistry and opticians are not part of the NHS.

Dentistry became too expensive for the NHS almost immediately after the service was launched as there was simply too much demand. There have been huge advancements in home tooth care (fluoride toothpaste etc) since then but people also eat a lot more sugar now and there are far too many people who don't do enough to look after their teeth.
It's therefore not really a surprise that dental care can't be fully funded by the taxpayer.

Because like GPs, when the NHS was founded dentists and opticians didn’t want to be part of the NHS. They wanted to be private contractors.

If everything is supposed to be part of the NHS that means forcing all healthcare professionals to work for the NHS, which no government has the power to do.

We have to accept that the NHS is never going to be able to provide us with cheap dental treatment.

I agree with this and I wish my nhs dentist practice had said something like 'we haven't got any dentists, you should go private' instead of cancelling appointments and almost stringing me along.

Same with schools. I'd love it if they were able to be more honest with parents about the situation. 'No, we haven't changed his book/listened to him read/found his unnamed jumper, we don't have a TA anymore. It's just me with 24 4 and 5 year olds'.

If children were taught to clean their teeth and eat fewer crap things, they'd rarely need a dentist

The last two check ups I’ve been to there has been children in awful pain being booked in as emergencies. I remembered because they were so distressed.

It shouldn’t get to this point but I think many parents don’t bother to go until there’s a problem. My own parents never took me so I made sure mine has never missed an appointment.