Hampshire dentists: Fed up patients waiting for up to two years for dentist appointments

Nine in 10 NHS dental practices across the UK are not accepting new adult patients for treatment under the health service, a BBC investigation found.

In a third of the UK's more than 200 council areas, no dentists were found taking on adult NHS patients; And eight in 10 NHS practices are not taking on children.

Residents who have been unable to get appointments have expressed their anger online.

Some say that getting a new NHS dentist or waiting significant amounts of time to see a dentist - up to two years in some cases - is causing distress.

The few practices that are taking patients on - such as Eastleigh Dental Care - are advising long waits, up to August 2023 for their first appointment.

A woman living in Brighton Hill, Basingstoke, said that she had been waiting two months to get an appointment for her wisdom tooth to be looked at.

After ringing every available dentist from Basingstoke, Tadley and Alton with no luck, she preceded to ring 111, who put her in touch with Gillies Basingstoke. Despite this, she was then informed that the practice had not been taking on NHS patients since the start of the pandemic. Now, she’s trying to get an appointment in Aldershot.

She said: "I cannot be the only person that is experiencing this. The hospital can’t help, they don’t have a dental people there. I have literally tried everything in last couple of months to get an appointment and even with an infection in wisdom teeth no one can help. This is disgusting." 

Problems have arisen due to NHS contracts which dentists say do not benefit nor subsidise them fairly for the work they are carrying out. This, along with the pandemic and Brexit, has resulted in a lack of trained dentistry professionals.

Trained dentists from abroad are no longer coming to the UK to work, as it can take years to complete all the exams to register to work in the UK. Most of the UK’s NHS dentists are independent businesses and not employed by the health service directly, while there was also a 10 per cent drop in dentists doing NHS work last year alone.

The lack of appointments, not only in the county but across the whole country, has led people to drive hundreds of miles in search of treatment, pull out their own teeth without anaesthesia and resorted in some making their own improvised dentures.

Website dentistsinuk.co.uk showed that the only locations to have any available dentists this month were Whitchurch (two practices available) and one each in Winchester and Fleet.

This left other areas in Hampshire, such as Aldershot, Andover, Fareham, Romsey, Ringwood, and many more across the county, with no practices taking on new patients.

Most practices were either not taking on new NHS patients at the moment, were only taking on NHS patients who had already been referred, or had not recently updated their information.

Dental problems in Portsmouth and Gosport, which are in the top 10 worst in the country, have had an impact on both GP’s and school attendance.

Portsmouth North MP Penny Mordaunt said constituents with dental problems had sought help from GPs, and that it was affecting school attendances.

She said: "Dentists are saying they're only funded to operate at 65 per cent of capacity so there's no incentive for them to do better.”

Phil Gowers, the chairman of the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local Dental Committee, said: "Hampshire traditionally is a bit lower than other areas of the country [in regards to funding] and Portsmouth is on the lower end of Hampshire."

He said morale was "really very low" with 47 per cent of dental teams looking for alternative careers.

On the Isle of Wight, NHS England had looked to create a contract to create a dental practice nearly four times as big as one full time surgery, following a review. Despite this, the bid to fill the contract has thus far been unsuccessful.

NHS England said it had been commissioning services across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight as a priority.

The NHS says teams are working to understand why previously interested parties did not come forward and once those responses have been evaluated will look at alternative, flexible arrangements.

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In July, the commissioning of dental services will move from NHS England to the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board. It has been hoped the move will allow for more local and bespoke arrangements to fix the Island's problems.

The Department of Health said it is making an extra £50m available to help “bust the covid backlogs”.

BBC News contacted nearly 7,000 NHS practices - believed to be almost all those offering general treatment to the public. The British Dental Association (BDA) called it "the most comprehensive and granular assessment of patient access in the history of the service".

NHS England said it had recently made changes to the dentistry contract and would "support practices to improve access, including giving high-performing practices the opportunity to increase their activity and treat more patients”.

It said discussions on further changes were "still ongoing".

Paul Woodhouse, dentist and BDA board member, told BBC Breakfast emergency appointments at his practice were filled within five minutes of being open.

He said the government was only providing 50 per cent of the funding the UK needed to care for every patient, meaning half of the population were being left without an NHS dentist.

"If you said that about GPs or cancer screening, there would be riots on the street," he said.