Paying the price to visit the dentist

When it comes to NHS dentistry it’s clear that NHS no longer means a free service. The charges for dental work were first introduced in 1951, and since then have been raised more and more each year. It now works out that patients pay towards 80% of the total cost of their dental treatment, with pregnant women, children and those on benefits receiving free treatment.

At the labour party conference of 1999, Tony Blair pledged that everyone would be able to have access to an NHS dentist, though this never happened. By March 2007, the Department of Health admitted that two million people did not have a dentist. And by the end of last year, less and less patients had access to a dentist despite more money being put into the system, and more NHS dentists being available. This is why the Health Secretary announced an inquiry into the situation.

The report that came about as a result of this inquiry largely looks into the dental changes that were brought about in 2006, where NHS dentists started being paid a fixed annual income for performing a set amount of work, instead of being paid 400 different fees for separate treatments – leading to a number of dentists leaving the NHS.

Since the changes of 2006 there was a sharp fall in the amount of complex work done on the NHS. The recommendations of the new report state that there will be new payments, with the cost of fillings being reduced. This will also help dentists to focus on general oral health rather than specific treatments.

In Europe the trend is more toward patient-funded treatments, making dental insurance almost a necessity.