NHS Dentistry, They Have Seen The Future
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- Published: Monday, 27 June 2022 08:41
- Written by Peter Ingle
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The recent Westminster Health Forum policy conference, ‘Priorities for dentistry in England - contract reform, professional regulation, integrated oral healthcare, training and education, and post-pandemic recovery and support’, may not have registered in many UK practices.
Change is coming at last to NHS dentistry, since those with the power to enforce it are now committed to reform. There are also many indications of how that reform will work. Some of the key ingredients were on display at the conference.
Speakers included a deputy CDO, a key figure in dental training, and representatives of various dental groups. There were also attendee’s from both regulators, dental corporates, including the largest, and others groups with an interest in the changes ahead.
As already reported in GDPUK, Professor Rebecca Harris, Deputy Chief Dental Officer, speaking in her capacity of providing clinical leadership on Dental System Reform in England, set out the boundaries of reform. There will be no more money. Changes will be modest and incremental. By inference the UDA will not be going anywhere soon. But by then the previous speakers had already laid out the formula for getting more out of less.
Ben Atkins, Trustee and Immediate Past President, Oral Health Foundation; and Clinical Director, Revive Dental Care is a general dental practitioner with a business including 11 different NHS contracts, 4 traditional practices, 4 Out of hours contracts covering 2.8 million people across the Northwest of England. Ben spoke of his experience delivering NHS care, and strategies to get the team to think differently about recall intervals. He discussed some of the challenges to getting not just the ‘worried well’ to accept check-ups at two yearly intervals, but also the dental teams setting their recalls.
Professor Jennifer Gallagher is the Newland-Pedley Professor of Oral Health Strategy, King’s College London, and her research interests include a particular focus on shaping the healthcare workforce to meet the needs of the population. She emphasised the key areas for training dental professionals for the future NHS landscape. Dental education needs to go, “beyond clinical skills”, and the team of the future needed to embrace sustainable dentistry. Cultural competency was also very important. Professor Gallagher touched on protecting the health and wellbeing of dental teams, and accepted that for some, that might mean leaving the NHS, or dentistry altogether.
Dr Sondos Albadri, President, British Society of Paediatric Dentistry, is the president of the British Society of Paediatric Dentistry. She is a Professor and Honorary consultant in Paediatric Dentistry at the University of Liverpool and Alder Hey Children’s Hospital. Professor Albadri is a founding member of a Managed Clinical Network for Paediatric Dentistry in Cheshire and Merseyside. She pointed out there were major inequalities in child dental health, as well as the shaming fact that extraction of rotten teeth remains the number one reason for admission to hospital of 5 to 9 year olds. She wanted to see an evidence based approach with fluoridation, as well school brushing programmes. A key feature would be upskilling the entire dental team to implement MI interventions.
Diane Rochford, President, British Society of Dental Hygiene and Therapy, was representing a historically under used group, whose time may at last be coming. She emphasised the links between dental and general health and spoke about using therapists to provide urgent care and stabilisation. This could be an excellent fit with the recently announced NHS Improvement’s dental transformation programmes 1b and 2.
48 hours after this conference, as reported in GDPUK, MP’s were once again debating the NHS dental crisis. For some time, many MP’s, including Conservatives, have been bemoaning the current failures and pressing for action. There was much talk of forthcoming contract reforms. And yet from the CDO up, there has also been messaging that any reforms will be incremental and much expectation management. There are now firm markers that there is no more money, and yet access and emergency care will need to improve if the torrent of bad news dental stories, are to stop.
The regular attenders who have been the mainstay of many practices, and underpinned their business model, may be about to get a rebrand as the ‘worried well’. Teams making use of dental professionals with enhanced scopes of practice can provide the basic care that is currently often unavailable. And all for no more money. A core service, by another name.
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