Dental Services: Contracts

(asked on 6th February 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has plans to reform NHS dental contracts to incentivise dentists to carry out NHS work.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 19th February 2024

On 7 February 2024 we published Our Plan to Recover and Reform NHS Dentistry. The plan will make dental services faster, simpler and fairer for patients and will fund around 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment.

The plan also sets out a number of actions to incentivise dentists to carry out National Health Service work. A new patient premium will support dentists to take on new patients, golden hello incentives will encourage dentists into under-served areas, and we will raise the minimum Units of Dental Activity rate to £28 this year, making NHS work more attractive and sustainable.

In addition to the changes to the contract which we made in 2022, we are developing further recommendations for dental contract reform to properly reflect the care needed by different patients and more fairly remunerate practices. We expect to develop options for consultation with the dental profession in advance of a further announcement later this year. Any changes would be phased in from 2025 onwards.

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