Gaps in service

I recently met with some dentists from different parts of England, some of these dentists work for emergency dental services and others work in other parts of the NHS but also involved in unscheduled care. Until now, I was unaware of the scale of the post code lottery in accessing out-of-hours dentistry. The story of patients contacting dentists in pain is not unfamiliar. However, there seems to be a general lack of recognition within the NHS that there are still some gaps in service provision when it comes to unscheduled dental care.

Unscheduled care in dentistry is often made up of a hybrid of walk-in dental services, ‘in-hours’ urgent dental care, out-of-hours dental care, dental triage services and emergency dental services often supported by hospital oral surgery or maxillofacial teams. In some areas, access slots also exist in general dental practice. Having so many different options, it would be hard to imagine that there are still gaps in services as it would appear as if dentistry has comprehensive cover.