NHS FTAs Derby City Council’s Meeting To Discuss Dentistry
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- Published: Wednesday, 27 April 2022 22:09
- Written by Guy Tuggle
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In a ‘you couldn’t make it up’ story, NHS spokespeople pulled out, at the last minute, from attending a specially convened meeting of Derby City Council’s Adult and Health Scrutiny Review Board which had been convened to discuss city councillor’s grave concerns surrounding access to NHS dental services.
Following an approach from the Adult and Health Scrutiny Review Board and council’s Children & Young People Scrutiny Review Board, NHS England / Improvement had submitted a comprehensive report which councillors on the all-party committee were poised to grill the NHS representatives about in public with the meeting streamed live on YouTube.
However, Committee Chair Cllr Alison Martin opened the meeting held on Tuesday last week, announcing “unfortunately, I have to report, that two hours before this meeting, we were told by Rosemary Lynch, who is the Senior Commissioning Manager for Dental Services in the East of the country that she had been instructed by NHS England that she cannot attend this meeting”.
The reason given for the NHS’s non-appearance was the proximity of the meeting to the local elections, the date of which was well known in advance of the meeting which had also been booked some time earlier, after councillors had been endeavouring to organise one for ten months.
The council’s legal officer saw no conflict of interest.
Councillors expressed ‘outrage’ of the failure of NHS managers to attend and account in public for the inability of so many Derby residents to access NHS dentistry.
Councillors spoke of entire families (including children) being taken off practice lists and citing that in Derby the NHS’s report revealed that 27% of five year olds had visible dental decay in 2018-19 – a figure that’s above the national average.
Cllr Martin spoke of a family whose dentist had gone private and, with no alternative to turn to, they had reluctantly decided that they, the parents who both worked, had no option but to pay for their children to be seen privately and go without themselves.
The bizarre subject of ‘registration’ was discussed and there was widespread agreement that patients don’t understand that there is no such thing when dentists clearly operate as if there is, denying access to those not on ‘their list.' James Moore, the CEO of Healthwatch Derby said this was a major issue that needed to be addressed.
The committee heard that people who were not regular attenders – over 50% of the population in recent years - did not know what to do when faced with an emergency. Calling NHS111 usually resulted in patients being given a list of practices to call, most or none of whom were willing to see them and many had not kept their NHS Choices data up to date.
In a bid to find a dentist one patient called fifteen NHS practices, none were accepting adults and only three were taking under eighteens. Healthwatch Derby too, had undertaken its own research which confirmed the scale of the crisis whilst in a survey of 98 practices Healthwatch Derbyshire found only nine accepting new adults and twenty-five that were taking children.
The Review Board hopes to reconvene the meeting with NHS representatives after the May elections.
The Derby City Council’s Adult and Health Scrutiny Review Board’s Dental Debate can be seen here:
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