Preet Kaur Gill with dentists at Edgbaston Dental Centre
The Government has announced that hundreds of thousands of people, including in Birmingham, will soon be able to access urgent and emergency dental care as the government and NHS rolls out 700,000 extra urgent appointments, delivering on Labour’s manifesto commitment.
Preet Kaur Gill, MP for Birmingham, Edgbaston welcomed the Labour Government’s announcement, describing the new appointments as ‘vital’ and ‘desperately needed’.
In Birmingham, 1 in 5 patients who tried to see an NHS dentist in the last two years were unable to do so, with access to NHS dentistry increasingly a lottery across the country.
The announcement marks the start of the government and NHS delivering on the manifesto pledge to provide 700,000 extra urgent and emergency dental appointments to address the crisis in NHS dentistry.
The Government has asked Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care Board (ICB) to meet a target of at least 9,005 urgent dental appointments.
After over a decade of failure, the Tories shockingly left millions of people in England with unmet need for dentistry. They brought in a New Patient Premium scheme that didn’t have any impact for new patients, with figures this week revealing that £88 million was wasted on the scheme.
Preet Kaur Gill, MP for Birmingham, Edgbaston said:
“Everyone in Birmingham, and across the country, knows the scale of the challenge facing NHS dentistry after years of failure under the Tories.
“In recent years it has become near impossible to get an NHS dental appointment and it is scandalous that the number one reason that five to nine year olds are admitted to hospital is because of tooth decay.
“I know that this is just the start and we need to see dental contract reform, but I am delighted that this Labour Government is taking such an important step not only repairing NHS dentistry but making it fit for the future.
“Labour made a promise and is now delivering that promise through our Plan for Change.”
Stephen Kinnock, Minister of State for Care said:
“We promised we would end the misery faced by hundreds of thousands of people unable to get urgent dental care. Today we’re starting to deliver on that commitment.
“NHS dentistry has been left broken after years of neglect with patients left in pain without appointments or queueing around the block just to be seen.
“Through our Plan for Change, this government will rebuild dentistry – focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients. This will take time but today marks an important step towards getting NHS dentistry back on its feet.”
ENDS
Notes to editors:
• The number of patients, by region, who tried unsuccessfully to get an NHS dental appointment in the last 2 years can be found here.
• NHS England has today written to integrated care boards (ICB) across the country, directing health chiefs in each region to stand up thousands of urgent appointments over the next year.
• The extra appointments will be available from April and have been targeted at dental deserts – areas where patients particularly struggle to access NHS dentists.
• Each ICB has a target of urgent appointments to roll out, based on estimated local levels of unmet need for urgent NHS care. Levels of unmet need are calculated by measures including looking at how many people tried and failed to get an NHS dentist appointment.
• These extra appointments will be for patients who are likely to be in pain – including those suffering from infections or needing urgent repairs to a bridge – and require urgent treatment. NHS commissioners will be working fast to secure these extra appointments this year, with appointments to start coming online from April.
• Urgent care appointments to be delivered by Birmingham and Solihull ICB: 9,005
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