What action will the Cabinet Secretary take to ensure that no child NHS dental appointments are cancelled due to dental practices exceeding their annual quota for seeing existing patients?
The current general dental contract is activity based (units of dental activity – UDA); once the set amount of activity has been delivered there is no more funding available.
Dental reform requires practices to see a set number of historic patients, which provides more security for patients than under a UDA contract, where there is no requirement for a practice to maintain a relationship with a patient.
We continue to work with health boards and dental practitioners to ensure the dental budget can be used effectively and is focused on those who need it most, including children.
We are negotiating a new general dental contract which prioritises prevention and patient needs and is fair to dentists. We will be consulting on this in the spring.