New dental statistics confirm access to NHS dentistry still in crisis
NewsPosted by: Dental Design 24th February 2022
Official figures published today show that patients are still struggling for NHS dental appointments due to the workforce crisis in dentistry.
15.8m adults were seen by an NHS Dentist in the 24-months up to 31 December 2021 which equates to 35.5% of the adult population. This is a decrease on the number of adults seen by an NHS Dentist in the 24-months up to 31 December 2020, which was 19.7m.
There was an increase in the number of child appointments in the same period, rising from 3.6m to 5.1m children which equates to 42.5% of the child population reflecting the priority the profession has given to children over the past year.
Neil Carmichael, Chair of the ADG, said: “The dental profession is doing what it can to try to meet the needs of patients, especially children across the country. They have stepped up to the challenge of providing treatment in a pandemic.
But behind this data there is a clear problem – we cannot offer more people NHS treatment without more dentists.
In the year to March 2021 the NHS lost a record 951 NHS dentists in England. Our estimates are that we could be seeing a similar exodus this year. The number of NHS dentists working in England is set to reach a decade low.
More must be done to attract people into the profession from home and abroad otherwise we are going to see more serious gaps in access to treatment across England and we will never recover the backlog of patient care from the past two years.”
