NHS: Dental Care Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Gardner of Parkes
Main Page: Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Gardner of Parkes's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(12 years, 2 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many dentists are now providing NHS dental care under the general dental services contract introduced in 2006; and what is the annual cost of the care provided and the amount generated in patient charge revenues towards funding this care.
My Lords, the latest figures published by the NHS information centre show that 22,799 dentists provided NHS primary dental care in 2010-11. The net allocation for primary dental care in 2010-11, the latest year for which figures are available, was £2,200 million. Patient charge revenue for 2010-11 was £617 million.
It is good to have the updated figures, but is the Minister aware that the two major concerns for patients now are transparency and availability? Availability is something that we look to the health service to provide. However, the transparency issue has become very important, not only to patients but to other dentists, who are very dissatisfied that dentists are able to put up notices saying, “National Health Service treatment available”, yet after a patient goes to them it emerges that the treatment is very limited. Does the Minister not think that, in the interests of warning the consumer, the present NHS fee charts should show that conditions may apply?
My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the importance of transparency of information for NHS patients. NHS Choices, which is the department’s public-facing website, already displays a lot of information about fees, the treatment that should be received and how to make a complaint about NHS dentistry, but more work is being done in this area to improve information on patients’ ratings of different practices, and we are updating the patient leaflet as well. What a dentist should not do is mislead a patient or induce a patient to access the surgery and then not provide the treatment that the patient thought they were going to get. If they cannot provide NHS treatment for whatever reason, they should point the patient in the direction of a practice that can, or else refer him or her to the primary care trust helpline.