Dental Services

(asked on 24th November 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate she has made of the number of people who have been unable to register with an NHS dentist.


Answered by
Andrea Leadsom Portrait
Andrea Leadsom
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This question was answered on 4th December 2023

Patients in England are not registered with a dental practice in the National Health Service, although many NHS dental practices do tend to see patients regularly. NHS dental practices are contracted to deliver activity and to deliver a course of treatment to an individual irrelevant of where they live, rather than to provide ongoing regular care. This means that there is no geographical restriction on which practice a patient may attend, allowing patients the choice of where they would like to receive a course of treatment.

The latest NHS Dental Statistics Annual Report published on 24 August 2023 shows that 18.1 million adults were seen by an NHS dentist in the 24 months up to 30 June 2023, an increase of 1.7 million or 10% when compared to the previous year; and 6.4 million children were seen by an NHS dentist in the 12 months up to 30 June 2023, an increase of 800,000 or 14% when compared to the previous year.

The annual GP Patient Survey also includes questions on whether patients have tried to obtain an appointment with an NHS dentist and, if so, whether they had been successful. The latest GP Patient survey data is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/category/statistics/gp-dental-statistics/

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