Patients from Hampshire miss out on NHS dental treatment

Latest figures reveal that thousands of people are experiencing problems with their teeth due to the fact they failed to sign up with an NHS dentist.

In the last year over 1,100 patients in the Hampshire area needed emergency dental treatment in hospitals, which cost the local NHS almost £700,000.

Portsmouth specifically has the sixth highest rate in Britain, out of a total of 152 primary care trusts for emergency dental procedures.

43 percent of those in the city, adding up to 113,611, have not seen an NHS dentist in the last two years.

The national average is 55 percent, and critics are claiming that the government has not been doing enough to solve the problem.

A new system was put in place in 2006, and is blamed for many of the problems. This saw dentists getting a set fee for treatments, where in the past they would have billed then NHS for as much work as they liked.

Conservative parliamentary candidate for Portsmouth South claims that 172 people in the area were forced to go to hospital for their dental care. He states that the figures are not surprising considering the number of people who are not registered at an NHS dentist.

The figures show that, across Portsmouth, Hampshire and West Sussex, more than a million patients have not seen a dentist in the last two years. The figures for Hampshire were above average, at 58 percent.

However, Debbie Tarrant from the Portsmouth City Teaching PCT states that additional dental services will come into operation next year, and that some of the emergency figures quotes could have been a result of accident and injury.