NHS dentists struggle to recruit in West Berkshire

Access to NHS dentists in West Berkshire is starting to improve – but levels are still below those pre-pandemic.

However, there are still major issues with people who have had a gap in their treatment.

“Their treatment needs are higher as they come back into the system,” Hugh O Keeffe, senior commissioning manager, dental NHS England explained to the district’s health scrutiny board.

“This affects how the dental practices can get through the backlog.”

He told the board that there are also workforce issues beginning to emerge.

“It is no different to what you might be hearing about a lot of NHS services – issues around morale, recruitment and retention,” he added.

“Across the South East, we have lost a number of practices which have decided to hand back their NHS contracts and go private – although this has not yet happened in West Berkshire it is an ever president risk. Part of this is driven by whether they can recruit dentists to work in the NHS.”

He said there is a percentage of the population who just go private and do not use NHS dentists and there is a percentage who only tend to go when they have a problem.

Access has been particularly challenging for patients who have not attended a local NHS practice in recent years.

This may be because they have recently moved to the area or choose not to attend regularly.

In order to help to address this, additional funding was offered to all practices in the South East region in December 2020 to provide sessions outside normal contracted hours for patients who did not have a regular dentist and had an urgent need to receive dental treatment.

Those practices are in Twyford, Reading, Abingdon and Haddendham. None are in West Berkshire.

There are 20 NHS dentists in West Berkshire, servicing around 172,500 people.

A report to the health board said it is a common misconception that practices are attempting to convince patients to be seen privately rather than on the NHS.

“This is because practices are contracted to provide a set amount of NHS dentistry per year and so are unable to increase the number of NHS appointments they can offer within their normal practice hours,” said the report.

“However, some can increase their private hours and therefore number of private appointments available.

"In some instances, practices may have filled their NHS appointments but still have private appointments available which is why sometimes patients may only be offered a private appointment.

Mr O’Keeffe said no one is now waiting more than two years for hospital service.

There are community-based tier two services for oral surgery and restorative dentistry designed to provide treatment for patients whose needs are too complex to treat in primary care but who don’t need to go to hospital.

The oral surgery service has also had a significant backlog of patients and restoration and re-set monies have been invested up to March 31, 2023, to help address this challenge.