What assessment has the Minister made of the effects of reducing regular dental appointments to once a year?
We are working on system reform in dentistry and moving forward collaboratively with the primary care reform programme in 2022. This includes working in partnership with the dental profession to improve access, experience and quality of dental care.
Action is being taken to expand involvement in contract reform across Wales by collecting and using clinical oral ‘need and risk’ assessments to plan care; giving personalised preventive advice; and agreeing appropriate recall intervals with patients to meet individual needs - this will reduce demand on dental services of healthy adults, some of whom are attending too frequently.
Guidelines on the frequency of dental check-ups were issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in October 2004. The guidelines state the recommended interval between recall intervals should be determined specifically for each patient and tailored to meet their needs on the basis of an assessment of disease levels and the risk of or from dental disease. Routine visits to the dentist every six months are not necessary for everyone anymore, largely because the oral health of the nation has improved dramatically over the last few decades.
Since April 2022, we have offered practices the opportunity to opt-in to a variation of their contract with Health Boards which will significantly reduce the reliance on Units of Dental Activity (UDA) in line with the principles of dental contract reform.
Practices joining the contract reform programme will have time to focus on providing preventive dental care by supporting a set number of patients for their annual contract value, instead of focusing solely on achieving their previous UDA target. This is because we know that tooth decay and gum disease are largely preventable through good tooth brushing and reduced frequency of sugar intake. Taking this preventative and needs based approach will also help open up access and practices will be required to see a given number of new NHS patients (based on the size of their NHS contract).
Practices will need to balance the requirement for urgent dental provision with the need to see new patients, however, a conservative estimate predicts that 23,000 new patients across the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board could gain access this year as a result of contract reform uptake. I’m pleased to be able to tell you that in the first 6 months of the current financial year over 13,600 new patients have attended an appointment.