Impact of pandemic on Shropshire’s dental services still being felt

The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on dentist services in Shropshire is comparable to every dental surgery in the county having being closed for a year, a new report has revealed.

Shropshire Council’s Health and Wellbeing Board will next week hear that dental services in the county have not yet been restored to pre-pandemic levels, with “significant numbers” of dentists lost from local practices.

A report to councillors says dentists who were previously commuting to rural areas have been less willing to do so since the pandemic, while some have left the NHS or gone part-time to take on more private work.

Figures show that in March 2020, across Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin, 276,000 unique patients accessed NHS dental services.

This dropped each month over the next two years, reaching a low of 205,000 in February 2022.

The report says the figure has now stared to creep back up, and was at 240,000 as of February 2023.

It adds that while many dental surgeries are experiencing a backlog, they are unable to take on new patients.

“During the Covid-19 pandemic, dentists faced many challenges and between 25 March and 8 June 2020 all routine dentistry was suspended as all dental practices were forced to close,” the report says.

“During this period, all dentists were required to provide telephone advice to patients and remotely prescribe antibiotics and analgesia as necessary.

“NHS England quickly established a strategic network of Urgent Dental Centres which were able to provide urgent dental treatment for the local population.”

Measures such as social distancing and the need for one hour ‘downtime’ in-between certain procedures meant surgeries were not able to operate at full capacity during this time.

The report continues: “The total impact of the reduced delivery thresholds and the period during which routine dentistry was suspended, is equivalent to every dental practice being closed for one year.

“The gradual increases in the minimum contractual delivery thresholds aimed to provide gradually more access for patients whilst ensuring that practices were financially supported to allow them to stay open and continue providing care.

“Whilst levels of delivered NHS dental activity have risen safely and significantly, as practices can see more patients each day, they are not yet able to offer a dental service equal to the pre-pandemic level and consequently many practices are not currently able to take on new NHS patients whilst they continue to manage the backlog of patients that will not have seen a dentist recently.”

The report highlights a number of measures which have been introduced to help increase dental capacity, with recruitment and retention of dentists cited as a “challenge”.

It says: “Post pandemic, it is evident that many dentists that commuted considerable distances to work in Shropshire have secured positions closer to their homes and they have consequently left local practices.

“Whilst many dentists no longer want to commute long distances, others now want to work part time and this is placing pressure on some existing dental practices, particularly if all the dentists want to work at the same time.

“Several dental practices have needed to secure additional adjacent premises to accommodate their dentists in the hope of retaining them.

“Many NHS dentists have reduced their NHS commitment or left the NHS completely to work as entirely private dentists.

“As some NHS dental practices have lost significant numbers of NHS dentists and some having failed to recruit replacement NHS dentists, some have decided to completely terminate their NHS dental contracts or reduce their contractual level of activity.”

In an effort to boost recruitment, the ‘Golden Hello’ incentive was introduced in certain rural and coastal areas in June 2022, in which full-time dentists receive a £15,000 one-off payment when they commence employment, with a requirement to repay a proportion if they leave within five years.

The report says: “Across Shropshire 12 practices applied for Golden Hello funding to support their dental recruitment campaigns and in total 14 dental vacancies were supported.

“To date three new part-time NHS dentists have been recruited and Golden Hello payments totalling £13,885 have been paid.”

Other initiatives to boost local dental capacity included three dentists participating in a weekend dental access scheme, totaling 112 sessions, and the launch of the Shropshire Clinical Dental Advice Line in June 2022.

Targeted schemes have also been launched to improve dental health among homeless people, children in schools and early years settings, and care home residents.

The report says one new NHS dental practice has opened in the period, with the new Pears Dental Practice in Oswestry taking on NHS patients from earlier this month, while two surgeries have terminated their NHS contracts and three others have reduced their NHS contracts.

The report will be discussed by the health and wellbeing board at a meeting next Thursday, April 20.