Experiences of dental care services
Download (PDF 362.36 KB)Summary of report content
This report is the collation of identical surveys of the public undertaken by eight local Healthwatch in North East England from late November 2021 until early January 2022 to discover their experiences of accessing and using NHS dental services. In total 795 people responded. During the same period, the local Healthwatch volunteers contacted dental practices in their catchment, with a series of questions, to understand the availability of services.
The majority of respondents found it very difficult to find an NHS dentist across the region despite some people being willing to travel some distance.
There was a roughly even split between respondents finding it difficult or very difficult and finding it easy or very easy to get a routine check-up. Just under half of all respondents were happy with the length of time they had to wait for an appointment.
Similar to booking a routine check-up there was a roughly even split between respondents finding it difficult or very difficult and finding it easy or very easy to get an appointment for minor issues.
There was a roughly even split between very difficult and very easy to book an appointment with a slight preference towards being easier. Almost all of these patients said they were in pain. Around a third were not able to get follow up treatment.
On the whole respondents found it easy to access treatment at a dental hospital.
The survey of 36 dental surgeries found that just over two in five were accepting new NHS patients. Over three in five said that patients would have to wait less than 2 months for a routine appointment.
Nearly three quarters were seeing private patients, and over seven in ten said that they offer private appointments if there were no remaining NHS appointments. Practices said that Covid-19 was still affecting the number of NHS patients they could treat.