Dental Services

(asked on 16th January 2024) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the number and proportion of dentists that advertise NHS services but are not able to provide them due to (a) levels of staffing and (b) financial reasons.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 24th January 2024

NHS England and integrated care boards review data each month on the number of practices open and accepting new patients. There is no data held centrally relating to the reasons why practices are not able to provide services within the National Health Service.

The Department announced a package of improvements to the NHS dental system in July 2022 and detailed in Our plan for patients. These changes now make it a contractual requirement for dentists to update their information on the NHS website at least every 90 days to improve information available to patients. This will make it easier for patients to find a dentist who can deliver the care they need and for the system to refer patients to practices with available capacity.

Reticulating Splines