Dental Services: Portsmouth South

(asked on 13th October 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of access to dentistry services in Portsmouth South constituency.


Answered by
Neil O'Brien Portrait
Neil O'Brien
This question was answered on 19th October 2023

Patients in England are not registered with a National Health Service dental practice, although many NHS dental practices do tend to see patients regularly. Therefore, neither Hampshire and the Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board (ICB) nor NHS England hold any information regarding waitlists for dentistry appointments.

To facilitate access for patients, Additional Access sessions have been commissioned in this ICB since 2020, where practices deliver sessions above the contracted activity levels normally commissioned to help patients access care if they have an urgent treatment need. There are three practices taking part in this scheme in Hampshire based in Eastleigh, Gosport, and Portsmouth.

We are currently working on a plan for dentistry, to improve access to dental care across England. There are several fronts where we need to take further action to support and recover activity in NHS dentistry, to improve access to care for all ages.

Our Dentistry Recovery Plan will build upon the first package of reforms agreed in July 2022, which included changes to banding and the introduction of a minimum Units of Dental Activity value. Our plan will include addressing how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver NHS care.

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