Neil Carmichael introduces the Patients First paper, the ADG’s recommended strategy for government reform of UK dental care.
Over the last few years we have become used to seeing headlines about dentistry across the media. Yet, the Association of Dental Groups (ADG) often feels that these headlines may not provide the whole picture of the issues facing dentistry in the UK.
To combat this, on the 11 September the ADG launched a paper entitled Patients First which puts forward seven actions to transform UK dental care. Launched in the Houses of Parliament, this document will be shared with MPs, government, and wider dental stakeholders.
The recommendations begin with the commitment required to support recruitment. The ADG understands from its members the issues of recruitment across the profession. As a mixed economy these concerns are seen across all areas, and fundamentally we cannot put patients first if there are no dentists and dental teams to provide their care. The concerns around how this disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable in society is of real concern.
The second recommendation is to use commissioning solutions to improve access. There are many examples of groups using flexible commissioning, for example, to provide emergency services to patients in need and domiciliary care support. Decisions to commission more ‘children only’ NHS contracts could provide access and help reduce future disease and decrease the need to access general anaesthetic hospital services for extraction.
The wider workforce
While we have seen an NHS workforce plan, this did not include dental nurses, and also did not consider the wider workforce. There should be a wide-ranging workforce review and strategy development if we are to see sustainable change making sure that the intimate relationship between general dental services, community dental services and other specialist referral services has been taken into account.
In order to make sure that patients can move between services in a timely manner and be provided the care they need these elements all need to work together and be fully staffed.
Added to these recommendations the ADG feels that investing in community prevention, such as community water fluoridation, sugar reduction initiatives and targeted supervised toothbrushing, must be a priority for the new government.
While many of the recommendations in the paper could be actioned in the short term and without legislative change, there are also areas that will take longer to see a return on investment, especially in the areas of prevention. This should not be off putting for the new government, a long-term view must be taken as well as the shorter-term improvements suggested.
The paper provides further detail of these recommendations and other areas to help focus government on what needs to be done in the short term to improve access to dentistry as well as considerations of the longer-term solutions to make sure dentistry in the UK is sustainable.
Patients must be put first as every consideration is made, while also considering the profession, recruiting people in and creating a working environment that means they want to stay.
For more information about the Association of Dental Groups, visit www.theadg.co.uk.
This article is sponsored by the Association of Dental Groups.
