Only 60% of people try to make a dental appointment
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- Published: Thursday, 21 January 2016 07:43
- Written by News Editor
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The latest patient survey of adults shows that 60% had tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the last two years. Of these over 90% were successful in getting an appointment; of the remainder most chose private care. Another survey of GPs showed that nearly one in five people have to wait more than a week for an appointment and more than one in 10 cannot get an appointment at all.
Just over one million adults were contacted and 421,000 replies were received and three fifths said they had tried to make a dental appointment, of these:
- 84% rated their NHS dental experience as positive (49% very good and 35% fairly good);
- 92% were successful in getting an appointment, a success rate of 94% when excluding the ‘can’t remember’ category.
- Respondents who were younger adults, from ethnic minorities, or who had not been to the practice before were less successful in getting an NHS dental appointment.
The remaining two fifths (40%) did not try to get an appointment with an NHS dentist in the last two years, 23% had never tried to get an NHS appointment and 18% had tried but over two years ago.
Of those who had not tried to get an appointment:
- 38% mentioned private dentistry as the reason for not trying to get an NHS appointment; 23% prefer private dentistry and 15% stayed when their dentist moved from NHS to private.
- Just over a fifth (21%) of those adults who did not try stated they had “not needed to visit the dentist” as the reason for not attending.
- 12% of the respondents who didn’t try to get an NHS dental appointment gave their reason as “I didn’t think I could get an NHS dental appointment”.
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