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Published: Monday, 05 October 2015 07:14

Written by News Editor

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NHS England’s Guides for Commissioning Dental Specialities relate to the commissioning of NHS dental care in England. Designed primarily for NHS England commissioners; the Guides are intended to address the need for greater national level standardisation in NHS England’s commissioning of dental care as well as providing clarity and consistency around the dental services the NHS provides.

The Guides support the aspiration to breakdown the artificial divide between primary dental care and hospital specialists in order to allow all providers to work together to focus on patients and their needs. To achieve this we will all need to respond throughout the implementation phase by unlocking structural and cultural barriers to support transformational change in dental service delivery.

The aim of the Guides is to offer a standardised framework for the local commissioning of dental specialties. They are intended to be used by commissioners as a support rather than prescriptive mandate with guidance on improving access to care, based on needs that are criterion referenced, with demonstrable high value health outcomes experienced by our patients and recognisable to the tax payer.

• Each guide describes a pathway approach in order to offer clarity and consistency for patients, the profession and commissioners.
• They have been designed to be used by commissioners to offer a consistent, clear and collaborative approach to commissioning.
• The Guides detail the mandatory clinical competencies required to deliver the various levels of specialist care rather than prescribing the clinical setting in which it must be delivered. This will allow commissioners to respond more effectively to the needs and complexity of patient care as well as providing greater patient choice by broadening the options to receive the required specialist care in a location that best meets the needs of the patient.
• The guides explain nationally agreed minimum specifications; best practice; contract content and design; and outcomes and metrics which can be enhanced locally and which are presented in sufficient detail to allow clinical interpretation and application.

Implementation of the Commissioning Guides will be a step by step process and they expect the pace of change to vary across England.

This topic is being discussed on GDPUK dental forum.

NHS England has published:

• Introductory Guide for Commissioning Dental Specialties
• Guide for Commissioning Dental Specialties – Orthodontics
• Guide for Commissioning Dental Specialties – Oral Surgery and Oral Medicine
• Guide for Commissioning Dental Specialties – Special Care Dentistry
• Guide for Commissioning Dental Specialties – Restorative Dentistry – To be published winter 2015

See:

http://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/primary-care-comm/dental/dental-specialities/

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