British Dental Association raises concerns over a lack of dental funding
The British Dental Association has raised concerns over a lack of funding for NHS dental services. According to research cited by the BDA, real-term spending on dental care has fallen by £7.50 per head in England.
A new study shows that spending on NHS dental care has decreased, despite the fact that charges for treatment have risen by up to 80 percent. The BDA suggests that a shortage of cash is now contributing to problems with access to NHS treatment, with many patients across the country finding it difficult to get an appointment with a local dentist.
Chair of the BDA’s General Dental Practice Committee, Henrik Overgaard-Nielsen, has accused successive governments of failing to provide sufficient funding for an affective NHS dental care system and criticised ministers for hiking charges at the same time as cutting budgets. The BDA also claims that the government has been extremely slow to bring about changes in the dental contract and stated that NHS dental services shouldn’t be a “postcode lottery.”
A recent investigation showed that 24 local authorities in England currently have no dental practices accepting new NHS adult patients. Recently, it was revealed that no clinics are taking on new patients in Jeremy Hunt’s constituency, South West Surrey, and the BDA is hoping that this will spur on a response to a situation that is getting worse by the day.
