NHS and private dentistry must collaborate to reduce oral health inequality

On two consecutive days, I had two very different views of what’s happening in UK dentistry now.

There are two very different worlds in UK dentistry at the moment. On one hand, you have the NHS, which is struggling to meet demand and keep dentists in the service. On the other hand, you have private dentistry, which is thriving and setting new standards of care.

This division is becoming increasingly stark, and it's leaving many people behind. Those who can't afford private dentistry are being forced to wait longer for treatment, or go without altogether. And this is having a devastating impact on their oral health.

I saw this firsthand recently when I met a hygienist who works for the special care and community dental services. She was struggling with her work, but not because she was being overwhelmed with demand for her services. Quite the opposite, in fact.

She was concerned about the white spaces that had entered their appointment book. It's easy to equate access issues with a lack of resources, but it's a far more complicated picture, with social deprivation and education playing a part. In this case, the challenge for accessing this hygienist lay in the referral pathway and the lack of local NHS dentists available to see and refer suitable patients to her service. The failure of the system was clearly taking its toll, as was the frustration at her inability to provide care to people who so desperately need it.

Just 24 hours later, I was in London attending the Private Dentistry Awards. You couldn't help but be struck by the buzz, the energy, and the sense of pride among all attendees as they received public acknowledgment for the incredible work they do in their own communities.

Of course, the biggest outpouring of joy was from those declared winners on the night, but just being among the nominees is an amazing achievement that validates all the hard work being done across the UK by these dental teams.

The contrast between the two worlds could not have been starker. Of course, I'm delighted at the success of the private dentistry sector as it is providing the inspiration and motivation to attract people to, and keep them in, the profession.

From the hundreds of dentists that my team and I have helped, I know that more money is rarely the motivation for ‘going private’. The emphasis consistently is on providing the high quality of patient care that gets recognized by patients and judging panels alike.

That delight does not stop me becoming increasingly worried about those in society that are being left behind by the continuing shift away from the NHS. The people who should be able to be seen by the hygienist who was the inspiration for this column, and my belief is that everyone in that room at the Private Dentistry Awards shares such concerns.

When speaking about his plans to reform the wider NHS, Wes Streeting has repeatedly spoken of the need for a more pragmatic constructive relationship between the private and public sectors to improve health outcomes. In that spirit, let's hope independent dental care providers and the NHS can be encouraged to find innovative ways of collaborating to reduce rather than widen oral health inequality.