NHS Scotland announces plans for resuming General Dental Services
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- Published: Wednesday, 27 May 2020 22:25
- Written by News Editor
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Following COVID-19 shutdown in Scotland, the NHS has now published a guide and implementation tools for general dental practices for the next phase of dental services remobilisation. The aim of this guide is to provide advice for primary care dental practices, but warns that as COVID-19 has only emerged in recent months, evidence to inform how to approach reopening is scarce or non-existent.
The Guide[i] expands on a letter[ii] published on May 20, by Tom Ferris, Scotland’s Chief Dental Officer outlining the process to ‘Remobilisation of NHS Dental Services in Scotland’. In the letter he outlined three key phases of remobilisation. Although no precise time line was provided but it was anticipated that ‘by the 31st July all practices will have reached phase 2(a)’.
Phase 1: Increasing Capacity of Urgent Dental Care Centres (UDCCs) .
The capacity of UDCCs will expand as soon as possible towards dealing with red, amber and green care set down in the SDCEP guidance on urgent dental care. During this phase dental practice should work with their Health Boards to prepare their practices to receive patients.
Phase 2: Restarting Dental Practices
During this phases NHS dental services are expected to re-start.
Phase 2(a): All dental practices to open for face-to-face consultation for patients in need of urgent care that can be provided using non-aerosol generating procedures;
Phase 2(b): Face-to-face consultation to be expanded for patients that can be seen for routine care, including examination, and treatment that can also be provided using non- aerosol generating procedures.
During phase 2 UDCCs will continue to see patients on referral for treatments involving aerosol generating procedures (AGPs).
Phase 3: Introducing AGPs to Dental Practices
During this phase there will be a limited introduction of AGPs to dental practices, this will be dependent on evidence of risk and possible mitigation.
[i] http://www.sdcep.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SDCEP-Resuming-General-Dental-Services-Following-COVID-19-Shutdown-250520.pdf
[ii] https://www.scottishdental.org/remobilisation-of-nhs-dental-services-in-scotland/
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