NHS Sussex: plans to transform dentistry

This information is taken from the NHS Sussex webpage and is accurate as of 21 February 2024.

"Improving access to NHS dental care is a top priority for the NHS in Sussex and reducing variability in primary care across Sussex is a key improvement focus in our plan for our population. Transforming NHS dentistry is a national priority and NHS England recently published its Plan to recover and reform NHS Dentistry.

"NHS dentistry has been under pressure for some time. NHS dental teams have been working hard to meet rising demand and although we have seen steady improvements in access, we know we need to do more.

"In April 2023, NHS England delegated Pharmacy, Dentistry and Optometry commissioning functions to NHS Sussex. Since the delegation, activities for the first year have focused on collaborating with dental providers, understanding services, governance, provider engagement and assessing needs.

"NHS Sussex has worked in collaboration with Public Health, dental consultants, dental professionals and our local communities to fully understand the barriers to NHS dental access and has developed a strategy for transformation to enhance routine and urgent dental care for people in Sussex.

"NHS Sussex held its first ever engagement event for dental professionals to better understand issues faced by practices when delivering NHS dental care and understand the reasons why dental providers are handing back NHS contracts. We learned from this activity that the key factors include workforce, recruitment and challenges with the nationally set funding rates for Units of Dental Activity (UDA rates) and high demand in deprived areas.

"To start to address this, work is ongoing to award new contracts and enhance capacity which will increase the number of appointments available.

"The actions taken by NHS Sussex to enhance NHS dental services in the last 12 months is ongoing and includes:

• A new contract has been awarded in Worthing and more NHS dental care has been secured from three dental practices in Adur and Worthing.
• In Brighton and Hove, to date, we have commissioned 10,300 additional temporary Units of Dental Activity (UDAs) and an additional 21,000 permanent UDAs which includes urgent access, extended hours and specialist support for younger children.
• In Brighton and Hove and East Sussex, urgent and emergency dental care has been set-up for patients who have not recently seen an NHS dentist under the Additional Hours Scheme.
• Across the whole of Sussex, work is ongoing to help meet the most urgent needs of adults and children where access is most challenging.
• A pilot is being led in Sussex to test an alternative model to provide routine and urgent dental care to improve oral health of residents in care home settings.
• A new approach to rapid commissioning of permanent UDAs is being developed in areas of high need which seeks to ‘level up’ the numbers of UDAs in areas with largest gaps in dental access. This pilot will commence across Sussex in the coming months.

"These actions aim to address specific challenges in dental access and improve oral health outcomes for residents across Sussex.

"The Sussex Dental Recovery and Transformation Plan for 2023/24 aims to support the further development of dental services for our communities in the coming year with five priority workstreams identified, including:

• operational delivery;
• practice resilience;
• service development;
• and innovation.

We recognise that further work is needed to address the current challenges in accessing NHS dental services and we are committed to working together to make the best use of our existing provision, test new innovations and develop services.

For further information including how to access an NHS dentist, go to: NHS Dentistry in Sussex"