Your NHS dentistry and oral health update

Tuesday 25 January 2022 (Issue 40)

An update from Sara Hurley and Ali Sparke

Dear colleague,

We are happy to announce that the NHS will provide patients with hundreds of thousands more dental appointments, thanks to a £50 million funding injection.

Funding will secure up to 350,000 additional dental appointments allowing people suffering from oral pain, disease, and infection to get the care they need, as services drive back to pre-pandemic levels.

Children, people with learning disabilities, autism, or severe mental health problems, will be prioritised over the coming months, with the one-off funding available until the end of the financial year. 

Locally, NHS teams will use the funds to secure increased care capacity amongst local dentists already operating to help patients suffering from oral ill-health.

Dentists involved in the scheme will be paid more than a third on top of their normal sessional fee for delivering this care outside of core hours, such as early morning and weekend work.

This funding is available within this contractual year only and cannot be accrued into 2022/2023 contract year and we encourage you to take up this offer to tackle the backlog in care. Naturally making full use of this opportunity relies on us working together with practices who are willing and able to take on this work, so whilst local arrangements are made we encourage you to make your local commissioning teams aware if you would like to be considered for this new capacity. 

Today's announcement is another step forward in restoring NHS dentistry to pre-pandemic levels and is a strong demonstration of the NHS' commitment to this important service.

As ever, on behalf of patients we are grateful for your continued hard work and dedication. 

Best wishes,

Sara and Ali

£50m shot in the arm for urgent dental care

NHS England and Improvement will be making available an additional £50m of non-recurrent funding for NHS Dental care provision for the remainder of 2021/22. This funding is available within this contractual year only and cannot be accrued into 2022/2023 contract year. 

The purpose of this funding is to address the most pressing issues around patient access where timely intervention for the relief of oral pain, disease and infection is vital to prevent and reduce future complications, including urgent care and subsequent stabilisation of oral health. This offer is in addition to the commitment already announced in the Q4 letter to fund GDS / PDS contract holders who are able to deliver up to 110% of their contracted activity.

We have identified three key areas where spend should be targeted: 

1) The purchase of non-recurrent activity outside of contracted hours, i.e. early mornings/evenings and weekends from existing dental contract holders.

This should be commissioned on a sessional basis with a national tariff payment of £654 per 3.5hour session. This figure reflects the requirements for a rapid response on the part of contractors to mobilise additional sessions.

Sessions may be delivered as 3.5 hour blocks or distributed as appropriate to the meet the needs of patients seeking care, for agreement with the contractor. These sessions should provide additional hours of NHS care over and above those described in the contractor’s contract, due to the expectation that contractors should already be maximising use of in hours capacity.

Patients seen in these sessions should be those with an urgent care and subsequent stabilisation need who contact the practice directly or via NHS 111 and be drawn from the clinical priority groups identified in the SOP.

There should be a minimum expected patient volume of 4-6 patients per session and the care offered should include both AGP and non-AGP care. Where supply of additional activity exceeds the funding available to commissioners, priority should be given to those contractors who have the greatest potential to deliver this additional access without adversely impacting upon delivery of the Q4 income threshold.

There should be reasonable confidence that the contractor can deliver this additional activity without adversely impacting upon delivery of the Q4 performance threshold. To be eligible for this additional investment contractors should have met the minimum performance threshold to avoid full financial clawback in H1 and Q3 of 2021/22

2) Purchase of nonrecurrent activity from existing suppliers of NHS contracted Community Dental Services (CDS), ideally at a minimum of two additional sessions per week where the workforce exists to support this in order to start to address the growing backlog in CDS services. 

3) Other short-term enhancements to the capacity and efficiency of existing urgent care provision, as agreed with the National Team e.g. use of hospital based dental service providers.

Commissioners will confirm the next steps in your area on how this funding will be allocated and awarded shortly.

Reminder: COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of deployment

From 1 April 2022 amendments to the Health and Social Care Act regulations will mean that those working in dental practices aged 18 and over, who have direct, face to face contact with service users will be required to evidence that that they have received a complete course of a Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) approved COVID-19 vaccine, subject to limited exceptions.

This will include front-line workers, as well as non-clinical workers not directly involved in patient care but who nevertheless may have direct, face to-face contact with patients, such as receptionists and cleaners.

To be fully vaccinated (first and second dose) by 1 April 2022, individuals will need to receive their first vaccination by 3 February and second vaccination by 31 March 2022.

NHS England strongly encourages members of the dental team who have not had both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine to book their vaccine without delay.

Further information can be found on the NHS website.

Further information can be found in the Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment (VCOD) for Healthcare Workers document which was published on 6 December 2021 (Version 1).

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Previous dentistry and oral health bulletins 

Previous bulletins can be accessed by clicking on the links below:

NHS primary care bulletin

The NHS primary care bulletin provides resources on health policy and practice and we encourage you to sign up for this, too. It is aimed at teams across general practice, dentistry, community pharmacy and optometry. 

COVID-19 advice, guidance and resources

NHS updates to the profession 

Key letters from the Chief Dental Officer and the NHS dentistry and oral health team are online here. 

Transition to Recovery: Dentistry's standard operating procedure

The latest version was published on Thursday 25 November. Changes to the previous SOP are in yellow. You can read the SOP online here. 

COVID-19: infection prevention and control dental guidance

The guidance is an appendix to and should be read in conjunction with the national guidance on infection prevention and control for COVID-19 . You can read the general guidance and the specialist dental appendix online here.

Avoidance of doubt note: provision of phased treatments

This document is to support dental professionals, and to clarify where it might be appropriate to provide phased treatment spanning over several courses of treatment (CoT). You can read it online here.

Health and wellbeing support