Dental work

[InterviewGhost]

Scenario, posting for traffic and joint incredulity.

You have a dental issue, which urgently needs rectifying.

No dentists accepting NHS patients within a 40 mile radius.

Dentist will not accept a payment plan.

You don’t qualify for finance. You cannot get a CC or loan. Friends and family are unable to lend you the money.

The only way you could afford to pay for it would be to not pay your rent this (or next) month.

What do you do?

If you tell 111 you're having severe pain etc they'll give you an emergency dentist details. They might be quite far away from your house still though. But you must say you're in pain else they won't class it as urgent.the emergency one will do extraction if necessary.

The emergency dentists near me (by near I mean in neighbouring counties) aren’t NHS, sadly, as I found out at the weekend…

It’s maddening isn’t it? It feels very dystopian

@InterviewGhostmine was broken and cost £240. You could ring round and get quotes. In my area a surgical extraction starts at £395, standard extraction starts at £85 and more complex including brown tooth starts from £150.

That's awful. I thought there had to be at least some NHS emergency ones in each area? Even if you have to travel an hour or more to get to them. People can die if their teeth are really rotten and infected without treatment.
Not often I hope but it's possible.
I hope you find one that can help you x

No idea if that’s the case but the two I was referred to were BUPA and were strictly private (and not open when 111 told me they would be as an aside).

Best of luck. I hope you find an nhs dentist to help

Gawd that's useless. Ring 111 again and say it's an emergency and you're in agony. Tell them you only can have an NHS one.
The government need to incetivise dentists to do NHS work, not penalise them.

I'm sure you have already done this, but just in case, have you checked the NHS 'find a dentist' service? I put in Leatherhead as the location and there are a few that say they may be taking on NHS patients "when availability allows" (not sure what this means though - sounds very carefully worded).

www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-dentist/results/Leatherhead?latitude=51.296161883887024&longitude=-0.3311191725067626

Good luck OP - dental problems are awful.

Thank you! This isn’t that far from me and I’ve actually contacted these surgeries and none of them are taking NHS patients on. It’s Surrey so what did I expect really?

Agghhh - sorry it didn't help. Surrey Heartlands ICB (Integrated Care Board) is responsible for commissioning dental services so it might be worth contacting their PALS service https://www.surreyheartlands.org/complaints-and-concerns, or Surrey Healthwatch https://www.healthwatchsurrey.co.uk/contact/. Healthwatch recommend this website for more information https://dentalchoices.org/.

Thank you!