DT News - UK - NHS England launches Long Term Plan to a mixed response

Dental Tribune UK

Wed. 9 January 2019

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LONDON, UK: NHS England has launched its new ten-year plan, which focuses heavily on early detection, primary care and prevention. Despite the public health service’s claims that this plan could help save up to 500,000 lives over the next decade, it has received mixed feedback from bodies representing dental and medical professionals so far.

In developing the Long Term Plan, NHS England made an online call for views that ran between 24 August and 30 September 2018. During this time, more than 2,000 submissions were received, and working groups attended more than 150 meetings on the topic across the country.

The plan, which was unveiled at Liverpool’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital by Prime Minister Theresa May and Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, commits to giving one-third of the £20 billion promised to the NHS by 2023 to general practitioners, community care and mental health. However, no additional funding has been granted to funding for NHS-provided dental services.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) praised NHS England’s vision, highlighting its emphasis on tackling health inequalities. “The health of children and young people is crucial to the future of this country, but England’s levels of care and well-being currently lag behind the rest of western Europe. That’s why we’re delighted to see children and young people at the heart of NHS England’s Long Term Plan,” commented Prof. Russell Viner, President of the RCPCH.

“We are pleased to see Simon Stevens’ plan support our vision that children in England will experience a seamless service delivered by an integrated health and care system, and await more information on how this will work in practice,” he continued.

The British Dental Association (BDA), on the other hand, was highly critical of the Long Term Plan’s lack of concrete funding for dental services, particularly those intended for children. “Warm words on prevention will ring hollow as the government fails to acknowledge the challenges facing 24,000 NHS dentists,” said Chair of the BDA’s Principal Executive Committee Dr Mick Armstrong.

“The Prime Minister launched her strategy at a paediatric hospital, serving a city that spends £1 million a year extracting rotten teeth from children. We have faced year-on-year cuts, a recruitment and retention crisis, and have patients travelling over 50 miles to secure access to basic services. Now a single unfunded scheme is being offered as a substitute for proper resources and a coherent plan,” he said.

“If government really intends to put the mouth back in the body they need to work with this profession on implementation. The alternative is to keep treating dentistry as an afterthought, and let the NHS pay the price,” Armstrong concluded.

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