Biggleswade dental clinic facing closure
A dental clinic in Biggleswade is facing closure, after health chiefs revealed that the running costs of the clinic are unsustainable.
The community dental service, which operates from the Biggleswade Health Centre on Safford Road, may be shut down in July, meaning that many patients will be forced to find alternative dental care. A representative from NHS Bedfordshire said that there was not enough money available to keep the clinic open. Richard Winter, chief operating officer at NHS Bedfordshire, wrote a letter to patients, saying that the health trust was trying to find ways to make NHS services more efficient and cost-effective; one of the proposals was to close some sites and expand and invest in existing services.
Tony Medwell, head of primary care commissioning at NHS Bedfordshire, said that the existing community dental clinic is expensive to run and it would cost a lot of money to bring the surgery up to current standards for decontamination; there is also limited space to expand the surgery. Mr Medwell said that the trust had written to all patients and their views would be considered before a final decision was made.
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