On Thursday 13 February the Public Accounts Committee held its oral evidence session on NHS dental services. The Committee grilled a panel consisting of Professor Sir Chris Whitty (Acting Permanent Secretary at Department of Health and Social Care), Amanda Pritchard (Chief Executive at NHS England), Jason Wong MBE (Chief Dental Officer England at NHS England & DHSC), Jonathon Marron CB (Director General – Primary Care and Prevention at Department of Health and Social Care) and Ali Sparke (Director for Pharmacy, Optometry, Dentistry at NHS England).
The session lasted for almost three hours and the Committee covered a range of concerns from the poor modelling of the impact of the New Patient Premium to the requirements of a reformed dental contract.
At the session the panel agreed that significant reform was required, and that only half the population could have access to NHS dentistry. In that context it was reiterated that the task was to ensure that “those who need NHS dentistry have access to it”. This, however, appeared to mean a focus on urgent and emergency dental care rather than an holistic model of health improvement or a on the reduction of overall health inequalities.
The Committee seemed interested and thoughtful in their approach, pushing for more clarity whenever required. The final report will hopefully be available by the end of April.
A total of 14 organisations submitted written evidence to the Committee ahead of the oral evidence session, from organisations such as the Local Government Association, NHS Confederation and of course the LDC Confederation. The full list and downloads of all written evidence submissions are available on the Committee website.
In our submission the LDC Confederation concentrated on the concept of value for money in NHS Dentistry. We made the case that the current contract does not represent an honest account of what is available or support any objective in the reduction of health inequalities or health improvement. Instead, if the budget is to be limited then it must be targeted to those populations who will benefit most. This means dentists working as part of Integrated Neighbourhood Teams, holistic care reducing overall health inequalities in line with local plans. The status quo of a chaotic free for all does nothing to help the overarching objectives of the NHS. In the short term we called for improvements to flexible commissioning guidance to allow ICBs to work with practices to use core funding differently to support the use of mandatory services for specific groups, and in the long term for contract reform. We also called for patient charges to be reformed to ensure they do not represent a barrier to care and for dental data to be improved to support local commissioning. All of this needs to take place in the wider context of a clear Vision and Mission for NHS dentistry built with the profession and other stakeholders from across health and social care.
The full recording of the evidence session is available to watch on Parliament TV.
