I recently had a beneficial and informative meeting with the Place Based Lead and Chief Operating Officer of the Local Care Partnership in Bexley. The Local Care Partnership is the borough level arm of the Integrated Care Board, the local part in the Integrated Care System. Building and maintaining these relationships is important as dental commissioning has just come into the remit of the South East London Integrated Care Board.
We agreed that dentistry has been outside of local planning for a long time and that there needs to be a closer interface between achieving oral health and the overall health of our patients. The goals of dental care are the goals of the rest of health care, so much greater alignment is necessary if patients are to reap the benefits of good oral health.
They appreciated the links with practising local dentists in order to inform them as to how to best manage the new structure for dental commissioning. There was a genuine interest from them to understand how dental services work and what the benefits are, as well as a desire to work together to remove local system barriers so that dentists can play our part in reducing health inequalities and improving health outcomes.
Their aims and objectives to help provide access to NHS dentistry to the residents of Bexley are the same as ours. Hopefully we can strengthen this partnership and build upon the connections that have been made. It was a very positive meeting, and I have now been invited to meet with the Leader of the Council and to present to the Health and Wellbeing Board on dental services in the Borough to take this agenda forward.
Our SEL LDC continues to work untiringly on several key fronts and continues to engage with the other organisations on behalf of LDC levy payers.
This synchronises with our mission statement and aims/objectives:
“For NHS dentistry to be integrated with the rest of the health and social care system to enable dentists and dental care professionals to maximise their skills for the benefits of their community.”
By doing this we will hopefully see a better working life for members.
