Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 12 February 2016 to Question 25934, for what reasons information about how many three year olds received a free NHS dental check is not collected centrally.

Normally the Health and Social Care Information Centre is the source for any patient information but does not collect the data requested. However further investigation revealed that the NHS Business Services Authority is able to extract the information. We apologise for not identifying this earlier.

All children receive free National Health Service dental care. Data has been provided for the number of courses of treatment (COT) for patients aged three where an examination has been recorded for the period 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015 and can be found in the table below.

Source: NHS Business Services Authority

Notes:

1. A CoT is defined as:

a. an examination of a patient, an assessment of their oral health, and the planning of any treatment to be provided to that patient as a result of that examination and assessment; and

b. the provision of any planned treatment (including any treatment planned at a time other than the time of the initial examination) to that patient.

2. Patient Age: Age for the patient on the date of acceptance. Derived from patient date of birth and date of acceptance.