Dentists in West Berkshire struggling with backlog

Dentists in West Berkshire are running at 65 per cent of full capacity as they deal with backlogs created by the pandemic.

They are prioritising patients with urgent needs, meaning routine check ups are at the bottom of the list.

The district is also short of dentists to meet the need.

Hugh O Keefe, the senior dental commissioning manager, NHS England and NHS Improvement (South-East), said Covid has had a greater impact on dentistry than some services due to the close proximity of dental teams to the patients they are treating with an open mouth in a confined space.

He told West Berkshire's Health Scrutiny Committee that the ongoing reduction in activity and backlog means that many patients, including those with a regular dentist, are unable to access routine care at the current time.

"We are taking local actions to support access," he said. "Additional access sessions have been offered to patients who don't attend regularly.

"We are trying to keep the system as open as we can and stabilise the situation but the backlog issue will continue for some time."

While access to dental care is limited, he said practices are concentrating on the provision of urgent care and treatment for patients with the greatest clinical need, and pleaded with council members to urge patients who had got appointments to keep them.

In the Thames Valley area (Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire) about 1.1m people (52 per cent of the population) normally attend an NHS dentist on a regular basis.

Funding has been offered to all practices across the South East Region to increase access by providing additional sessions outside of their normal contracted hours.

These sessions are for patients who do not have a regular dentist and have an urgent need.