Dental cover

Access to NHS dentistry appears to be returning to its pre-2006 dental contract levels, but the so-called efficiency savings demanded by the new coalition government could see this hard work undone.

There is growing concern that Chancellor George Osborne’s emergency budget will result in NHS finances coming under increasing strain over the next four to five years. The Chancellor said he would honour an earlier pledge to ring fence increases in health service funding in real terms, but the NHS Confederation, which represents NHS employers, believes cuts to other areas, such as local authorities, may have an indirect impact on health expenditure.

NHS Confederation chief executive Nigel Edwards recently says: “Although health spending will continue to rise year on year, all NHS trusts will find they are challenged to do more for the money they have.”

If this is the case, it seems almost inevitable that NHS dentistry will suffer. Morag Peterson, dental product manager at health insurer CIGNA, points out that the money for dentistry will be in the whole healthcare budget and the primary care trust (PCT) will be free to allocate these funds as they wish to.

“So, although NHS funding as a whole has been ring fenced, because money is limited it is highly possible that dentistry will take lower priority when it comes to how and where PCTs allocate their cash. The new coalition government is committed to exercising limited central control over how NHS money is spent locally so the outcome is likely to vary by locality,” she says.

Although it is still unclear what changes the government will introduce, it has committed to undertake a review of NHS dentistry as a whole. At the beginning of June, Earl Howe, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for health with responsibility for dentistry, said the government’s proposed reforms will be announced once they have consulted with the profession and patient groups. The Steele Review of NHS dentistry, published in June 2009, made a number of recommendations to improve quality and access to NHS dental services and some of these have begun to be piloted by the Department of Health. However, there is no indication that the new government is seeking to put any further investment into this.