It seems a year doesn’t go by without some sort of crisis or demand for action in the Welsh NHS – usually around treatment times. That hasn’t been helped by the Covid-19 pandemic.
One part of the health and social care system which perhaps hasn’t been focused on as much – but faces as many challenges as any other part – is dentistry.
Dental services were subject to an inquiry by the Fifth Senedd’s Health Committee (Senedd Home summary).
The NHS Wales General Dental Service (GDS) contract as it currently stands tends to lean towards a “drill, fill, bill” model of treatment.
While that’s probably what most patients expect, it undervalues the full range of skills available at a dental practice. It’s also probably very boring/repetitive and often means oral health problems are only treated once they’ve become more serious, instead of emphasising prevention and ongoing maintenance of good oral health.
There have been plans to reform the GDS contract in Wales for several years now and it has been gradually piloted at some dental practices.
In July 2021, the Welsh Government announced that the continued rollout and development of the new NHS dental contract will be postponed until April 2022. This is to give dental services more time to deal with the pandemic treatment backlog – more on that later.
Seeing as the pandemic is ongoing that date may be optimistic and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s another delay into late 2022/early 2023.
