NHS Dentistry Crisis - Wide Exposure In News
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- Published: Friday, 21 January 2022 08:05
- Written by Peter Ingle
- Hits: 2013
When Eddie Crouch announced that he was “sensing a big press and media day regarding the problems facing Dentistry tomorrow” it seemed a little ambitious. After a day filled with political defections, plotting, and the PM told to go, not just by the opposition, but his own side, could teeth really get a look in?
Despite there being no shortage of other news, dentists will struggle to recall a day when dentistry got so much media coverage. Even a Conservative MP issuing a statement in which he accused government whips and No 10 of intimidation and the blackmail of its own backbenchers, and a called for a police investigation, failed to squeeze out the mass of dental features and interviews.
Across the UK dentists spoke out. BDA GDPC chair, Shawn Charlwood featured on BBC news and was also interviewed by a variety of BBC local radio stations. He pointed out that the Health Select Committee over 10 years ago described the UDA system as “unfit for purpose,” that no Covid catch-up funding had gone to dentistry and that the system was funded to only deal with 50% of the population. The interviewer unsurprisingly struggled to understand why the NHS contract should have been designed to so severely limit the amount of work and patients seen. The BBC’s own analysis of DOH data showed almost 1000 dentists had left NHS work in the last year. Shawn Charlwood pithily summed up a key problem that “Ministers have failed to grasp that we can’t have NHS dentistry without NHS dentists.”
Others speaking on television and radio on both BBC and commercial networks, included Mark Green describing the situation as “diabolical,” and adding that “we are almost a third world country” when it came to dental care. Joe Hendron lucidly explained the failings of both the UDA system and the commissioning process while Phil Gowers in Portsmouth described the effects of the last year’s 25% reduction in local NHS dentists. The criticism was not limited to England, with the BDA covering the problems in all the home nations. Lauren Harrhy on BBC Wales radio was interviewed in a discussion about the delays of up to 2 years for appointments. There were many more dentists across the UK who were speaking out and their message was consistent. NHS dentistry was failing, and that in Mark Green’s words, “radical and instant” reform was essential.
On the BBC website there was a traditional superglue DIY dentistry story as well as Shawn Charlwood’s interview. An indication of the level of coverage dentistry has received, was that this was followed by links to five more dental items, all related to the problems besetting the availability of NHS care.
All in all, dentistry, and specifically the disintegration of NHS services, was all over the news today, and hard to miss. We will not have too long to wait to see if anyone in government was actually listening.
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