Access to NHS dental services
We asked people to tell us where they had found good access to NHS dental services and where they had found poor access: 93% of people reported poor experiences of accessing services.
We found that the problems of finding a dentist willing to treat patients under the NHS has impacted on all ages from toddlers through to the over 80s. People are reporting that the NHS service to help people find a dentist is very out of date and often it indicated that a practice was taking on NHS patients but when people rang the practice they found out it was not correct.
Update
(7 September 2021)
According to one independent source there is currently only one dentist in the Shropshire Local Authority Area listed as taking new NHS patients (source: NHS dentist near me » Dentists taking new NHS patients - Dental Choices)
Key Findings
- There is poor access to routine NHS dental services across Shropshire but this appears to be worse in some areas, particularly Oswestry and Market Drayton.
- There is a lack of accurate information about whether there are dentists taking on NHS patients.
- There is confusion caused by the current approach to the issue of “registration”. There appears to be a widely held misconception that patients are registered with an NHS dental service in the same way that a patient registers with a GP practice
Full Report
If you need this report in a different format, please contact us:
enquiries@healthwatchshropshire.co.uk
01743 237884
