'Dental van' to offer NHS services in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

At least one “dental van” will offer NHS services in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, healthcare bosses have said.

The region’s Integrated Care Board (ICB), which brings together healthcare organisations with voluntary and community services, confirmed it will benefit from government plans to fund mobile dentists in rural and coastal areas where people struggle to access appointments.

The Department of Social Care (DHSC) unveiled a plan to try to recover NHS dental services in England last month, alongside £200m funding.

As well as dental vans, this included £15–50 payments to dentists offering services to people who haven’t had an NHS appointment in two or more years.

It will also see the minimum value of dental services – from examinations to fillings – rising from £23 to £28, which the ICB says will affect a “small number of contracts” in the region.

DHSC says that, between 2020 and 2022, at least 7 million fewer patients saw an NHS dentist compared with pre-pandemic levels. It adds that their funding will help deliver 2.5 million additional NHS appointments.

Region's ICB to face questions about dentist's appointments

The ICB will face questions about regional plans to improve the availability of NHS dentist appointments next week.

Peterborough councillors requested a meeting with representatives of the ICB to hear an update, scheduled for Tuesday, 12th March.

A report issued ahead of the meeting says the pandemic “exacerbated the under delivery and the restoration of NHS dental services” in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, but that performance issues predate it.

The ICB says it wants to “assure” councillors it’s working to “recover and restore effective dental services” after taking on responsibility for them in April last year.

It has identified Peterborough as having the “highest level of health inequalities” in the region, it said in the report, and as such the city benefits from a larger proportion of the £6.1m of funding it has secured for the region.

This involves ensuring high street dentists are providing additional NHS sessions and offering one-off payments to newly qualified dentists to work at specific practices, nicknamed a “golden hello”.

DHSC has also promised golden hellos of up to £20,000 for dentists who agree to provide NHS dental services in under-served areas.

The ICB also says it’s working to improve access to appointments for children, young people in care and care home patients and staff to try to lower the instances of patients turning to doctors' surgeries and emergency departments to treat dental problems.