UPDATE FOR PATIENTS AT TAVERHAM DENTAL PRACTICE
Following the news that Taverham Dental Practice would stop seeing their NHS patients, I met with the Chief Executive of the Norfolk and Waveney Integrated Care Board (ICB) to see how NHS dental provision for Taverham can be restored. The ICB is the body responsible for the provision of all health care in the County and has power to negotiate dental contracts with a significant budget available to do so.
However, it appears here that the issue is not primarily money but availability of dentists. For example, in June the Taverham Dental Practice asked the ICB to reduce the size of their NHS contract by 25% because they could not recruit sufficient dentists and had failed to deliver the agreed amount of treatments in 2022 (the ICB agreed to this request). That said, they appear to have enough dentists to treat patients privately.
The Chief Executive of the ICB has agreed to make sure that a new contract for Taverham is advertised as soon as possible so that full NHS provision is resumed. We also discussed making available a cash incentive to make a move to Norfolk more attractive since we do not have a large pool of dentists within the county.
Many of the emails that I have received from residents in Taverham have focussed on the particular need for NHS dentistry for children. Whilst Taverham Dental Practice have been adamant that they do not intend to continue offering an NHS service overall, in other locations the ICB has been successful in persuading practices to continue to cover vulnerable groups including children. The ICB has agreed to return to Taverham Dental Practice to see whether a similar agreement can be reached.
None of this helps right now, so I was grateful to the ICB for highlighting that they have substantially increased provision for urgent dental care in the Norwich area, with 300 additional hours of treatment per week made available to treat people in pain as we sort out the longer term solutions.
As always, I will be continuing my ongoing campaign for a dental school at the University of East Anglia. This is the only solution that will solve the long term challenges in rural recruitment and is critical for ensuring that we fix dentistry in Norfolk by training and retaining talent in the East of England.