Dental Services: Procurement
(asked on 3rd March 2022) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the impact of existing dentistry procurement rules on dental practices’ ability to change commissioning arrangements.
Answered by
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Within the existing dental contract, National Health Service dental contractors are able to deliver up to 4% below and 2% above their contracted number of units of dental activity and carry this activity over to the following year. An additional 2% or up to 104% can be carried out with the agreement of regional commissioners.
Flexible commissioning allows regional commissioners to work with dental practices to utilise a portion of an existing contract to deliver additional services and activity. This is often used to deliver specific initiatives, including oral public health improvement.