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29
Jul 2024
Health strategy criticised amid lack of dentistry access
A strategy to tackle North Yorkshire's health inequalities has been pushed forward as its public health boss admitted the best efforts of the council and regional NHS bosses would make little difference to residents’ ability to access NHS dentistry.
Councillor Michael Harrison, North Yorkshire Council’s executive member for adult services and public health, said the North Yorkshire Joint Local Health and Wellbeing Strategy to 2030, developed in conjunction with the NHS and patients’ group Healthwatch North Yorkshire, aimed to be transformational.
The document highlights areas such as Scarborough and parts of Selby, Harrogate and Richmondshire where the gap in life expectancy between the most deprived and least deprived wards can be up to 11 years for men and 10 years for women.
The plan of action includes continuing the regional NHS “programme of investment in access to NHS dentistry”, using population health data “to direct dental funding to the areas of most need to help reduce inequalities”.
Ahead of its adoption, several councillors said the strategy was “fantastic” on paper, but profoundly flawed in reality, with some saying it was virtually impossible to get an NHS dental appointment in many areas of the county.
Labour's Falsgrave and Stepney councillor Liz Colling said “yet another dental practice” in her area would stop offering NHS services on September 1 and most of the few remaining practices still offering NHS services were “not even accepting people onto their waiting lists”.
Aire Valley Green Party councillor Andy Brown said the strategy contained “some fantastic theories” but it contradicted the council’s continuing sale of sugary drinks at its leisure centres.
He said more than a fifth of children in the final year of North Yorkshire primary schools “could not run properly” as they had been judged to be “obese”.
However, housing and leisure services executive member Cllr Simon Myers said the Conservative-run authority would use every tool it had to reduce health inequalities and was set to review its leisure services offer.
Children’s services executive member Councillor Janet Sanderson added:
Children make improvements in their health by being educated, not restricted in choice.
Cllr Harrison, a Conservative who represents Killinghall, Hampsthwaite and Saltergate, said the closure of the latest NHS dental surgery was part of a trend that stretched back 20 years to the start of the NHS national contract for dentistry, which he said was viewed as “a barrier to better care”.
He said the contract had set a fixed unit of dental activity rate in 2006, which could disincentivise the provision of NHS dentistry, requiring practices to provide “episodes of treatment rather than continuity of treatment”.
He said although regional NHS bosses had assumed responsibility for the commissioning of dental services last year, they were constrained by the national contract, so were instead undertaking reviews with practices to understand their issues and prevent contract hand-backs.
He said the regional NHS was operating flexible commissioning, particularly for primary school aged children, as well as offering increased numbers of emergency appointments.
Cllr Harrison added “none of this will fix the root cause of the national contract”.
He said:
The new secretary of state for health and social care apparently has reported that the NHS is broken. I think we’ll all agree, certainly for NHS dentistry, absolutely it is. And without fundamental changes to the national contract I think the public will continue to stuggle to access NHS dental care.
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