NHS Contract changes. What they said and what they meant*

The changes announced today address many of the challenges voiced by frontline dental teams and will make a real difference to patients.

We just hope that the changes announced today will get us some more positive press.

With a shift in the emphasis of financial reward and a re-orientation of clinical activity to those patients that need it most we are focussed on improving

That sounds so much better than “we have re arranged the deck-chairs”

access to NHS dental care and our support for our valued dental teams by:

Best not to define “valued” as £23 for a UDA.

‒ Introducing enhanced UDAs to support higher needs patients, recognising the range of different treatment options currently remunerated under Band 2

Replacing really perverse incentives with slightly less perverse incentives.

‒ Producing supportive material for patients, the public and dental teams around NICE recall intervals

Good luck explaining this to your regular attenders!

and introducing an extra field on the FP17 form to help peer review

Those FP17’s still look a bit empty to us.

and monitoring of adherence to personalised recall intervals.

This is how you and your core patients can pay for the changes.