Building works

Heard from your local Primary Care Trust (PCT) recently? Chances are you might not have since they are winding down, along with Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs). If you didn’t already know, PCTs are being replaced by a new commissioning structure called the NHS Commissioning Board (NCB) with 27 area teams, just one less than the number of SHAs set up in 2002. These changes are being conducted as part of the restructuring of the NHS in England after the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill was passed last year, and just like building work the new architecture is being pieced together in time for April 1, 2013.

Some PCTs have worked extremely well with their clinicians, developing innovative dental pathways, however there has also been a degree of inconsistency. The NCB will carry out its work within a single operating model, providing a more consistent commissioning approach. Dental health care, for the first time, will be funded through a separate stream to general health care which will go through Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) - the new GP-led bodies. Whilst some observers say that a separate funding stream will act to protect NHS dentistry, at least in the short term, others say that NHS dentistry is at risk of becoming marginalised.