Dental care mess must be resolved

From the archive, first published Thursday 9th Feb 2006.

Next week's meeting of Bradford Council's Health Improvements Committee will face a big challenge as members seek to find some way out of the mess that NHS dentistry is becoming. The committee decided to investigate after acknowledging at its October meeting how difficult it is for unregistered NHS patients to find dental care in the district.

Since then a growing number of people who thought they were securely registered with an NHS dentist have been told that they must re-register as private patients. The crisis is deepening, propelled by the new contract for dentists which is due to come into force on April 1 but has been declared by the treasurer of Bradford's Local Dental Committee, Mark Edwards, to be "deeply flawed". Mr Edwards says that on top of not getting dentists off the treadmill created by the old contract, it will create additional problems, which is why they are voting with their feet and leaving the service.

It will be catastrophic for many patients, who simply will not be able to afford private treatment. That means that they will also be unable to take advantage of the preventive service offered by dentists, who apart from dealing with teeth problems can also spot early signs of serious illnesses, including mouth cancer.

It does not seem acceptable that in 2006 we should be heading back to the oral hygiene standards of the pre-NHS days. It is to be hoped that whatever conclusions the committee comes to, the health service locally is able to use them to lobby the Government into looking again at this issue before dentistry vanishes completely from the NHS map.

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