A record number of people in Scotland are registered with an NHS dentist, according to the latest figures. A total of 5.2 million people were signed up as at 30 September 2019. The figure represents 95.7% of the Scottish population, and is an increase of 2.3 percentage points on the previous year. Registration rates were similar for children and adults (94.3% and 96%).
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Former Health Secretary and Tory party leadership contender, Jeremy Hunt MP, has been elected to the chair of the Commons Health Select Committee. The BDA has sent him a message asking him to “reopen the inquiry into dentistry” which was instituted by his predecessor, Dr Sarah Wollaston, but ended with the general election.
Dental Protection has told the Government that it is now time to focus on getting UK dental regulation right. Raj Rattan, Dental Director, urged the new Government to move things forward quickly saying: “Few areas of regulation in the UK are more overdue reform than healthcare professional regulation.”
Read more: Dental Protection urges Government to sort out dental regulation
The survey for the quarter ending 31st October 2019 has seen a big leap – again – in the goodwill as a percentage of fee income in deals done. This is the fifth quarter in a row that deals have risen – from a low of 122% of gross fees in quarter ending October 2018, to 157% of gross fees in this latest quarter. Alan Suggett, who compiles the goodwill survey, said, “It is clear that in many parts of the country that the practices sales market is still buoyant.”
Read more: NASDAL Goodwill Survey Results – deals done continue to rise
There were over 14,000 people on the waiting list for an NHS dentist in Plymouth in October 2019, and the number is continuing to increase. The news comes after the BDA revealed back in November that more people in Devon and Cornwall are struggling to access NHS dentists than anywhere else in England. GDPC chair, David Cottam claimed that this was due to a ’perfect storm’ of underfunding, failed contracts and recruitment problems.
Read more: NHS dentist access problems hit the South West of England
Speaking in a House of Commons debate, dentist Sir Paul Beresford MP said that water fluoridation was ‘by far and away the best-proven method to reduce tooth decay among children, and even more so among adults, is fluoridation of the water supply’. He said one problem it is left for local authorities ‘to instigate and compel companies to fluoridate their water supplies’.
Read more: Sir Paul Beresford backs water fluoridation in Parliament