Dental Services: City of Durham
(asked on 18th October 2022) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that every child in the City of Durham constituency has access to an NHS dentist.
Our Plan for Patients’ includes initial improvements to ensure dentists are remunerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver NHS treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The Plan also includes streamlining processes for overseas dentists; and holding the local ICS to account for dentistry provision. A statement was also made on 19th July on the reforms that the Government has made to the dental contract.
The Government is working hard with NHS England and contractors to restore dental services across England, including in Durham. NHS England asked dental practices to return to delivering 100% of their contracted activity from July 2022.
In circumstances where parents are unable to access an urgent dental appointment for their child directly through a NHS dental practice, they should contact NHS 111 for assistance.