Help.. My NHS dentist has gone private.. Now what??

[herladyship]

Have been with a fab dental practice for about 5 years..

They have just written to me to say they are going private and that the cost of their new plan is about £60 a month for a family of four, and that price doesn't cover everything by any means

I thought the NHS website had a 'find a dentist' type facility, but now I can't find it on there!

Any advice [hopeful emoticon], or do I have to ring every dentist in the yellow pages looking for one with spaces??

i would get ringing round hun, terrible that, thye shouldnt be allowed to just to that

should of read "they shouldnt be allowed to just do that"

i was afraid you would say that

tbh, (as an NHS employee) i can understand why they want to opt out of the NHS..

but still a nightmare for me!!

you can call nhs direct
0845 46 47
and they can give you a list of nhs practices near you

didn't think of nhs direct..

will give them a try! thank you

You can search on the NHS direct website - www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/find/results/index.aspx

It's under 'find a local health service'

loopylou66 why exactly shouldn't they be allowed to do that?????

comeonveneer, i undersatnd u are in the dental trade so i expect u would be quite defensive of the going private thing, but for us people who dont have much money its a nightmare when u care very much about ur teeth but cannot find an nhs dentist, its a simple fact that alot of us dont have enough money to pay for private treatments

This happened with my dentist and he didn't even bother to write to tell me. I found out when my mother went to see him.

I don't agree either with them just transferring to private and effectively abandoning the NHS patients who can't afford private treatment.

I don't know whether it's possible for them to make the changeover gradually, possibly by not taking on new NHS patients, but it's very harsh if you're the patient on the receiving end.

ComeOVeneer.. are you a dentist by any chance??

and if yes, are you in lincolnshire and do you offer a discount for fellow mumsnetters??

If you understood how the nhs dental system worked from a dentists perspective then perhaps you would think differently. Yes it is tough to find your dentist has turned private, but try to remember they are also people with bill/mortages etc to pay. They aren't a service provided for your convenience, they are human beings with familys and lives.

ours did this.its now hour each way to dentist so if appointment in school time,half day gone!we were told only other option was to use emergency dentist 30 minutes away if problem.they didnt quite get why i wanted my children atleast to have regular checkups!

oh and i dont drive so dh misses half day off work too.public transport in cornwall is crap!i could get bus there if i went via italy or something

blimey if dentists are in it to provide and service, and just for the money, I could think of much nicer ways to earn a living than looking in people's mouths all day

yes but if human beings didnt have teeth then there would be no need for dentists would there? the need for dentists will soon drop when nobody apart from rich people can AFFORD any treatment on their teeth, i had zoom whitening and am still paying it off months later, i would also like to add that every time u go past a dentist car park there are plenty of the dentists flash cars ie aston martins etc parked up in the car park so i wouldnt imagine they would have to much trouble paying their mortgages, dont get me wrong, dentists do a FANTASTIC job and deserve wjhat they get but theya re still very highly paid and its not fair to us people on lower incomes to have the nhs facter snatched from under our noses so dentists can earn yet nmore money

Charging for adults is one thing COV but our dentist wanted to charge us £80.00 a year just to look in my childrens mouth, a process which takes all of 2 minutes!! Something I object to when I take the time to make sure my dc's dental hygiene is good and ds has made it to 13 without a filling, and dd has good teeth at 4.

I don't understand why the same system doesn't work for NHS dentists as NHS doctors who work in NHS hospitals and also see patients privately.

Loopylou, with all due respect, how do you know what they earn, belive me ubder the new nhs system my income dropped and on occasions, because of how badly the system has benn "revised" it has actually cost me to treat a patient.

Pardon the lousy typing

i dont know exactly and i dont mean to slate u or your job, but it is well known that dentists have a lot of money and it just annoys me that something so important it basically being made unavailable to people who dont have much income

It is not well known that dentists have lots of money!!! If you have a gripe with anyone, blame the government, not dentists.

i think most people would agree that dentist are well paid and my husband has worked for many many dentists and they are all good earners and my friend is a dental nurse and is also a very good earner

I'm afraid I have to agree to disagree on this point. Under the nhs, the financial situation for a dentist is not good. Bear in mind what they earn has to pay their staffs wages, buy and maintain equipment, rent on premises, buy materials, pay for safe waste disposal, lab fees etc etc etc. Then they get to take some home to pay their home bills and keep their family.

Well, it's obviously do-able because we still have a couple of NHS dentists here and they don't look like destitute to me.

rantinghosewife, they iss a vast difference between being destitute and starting to incur debts, tighten the purse strings.