Isle of Wight NHS Confirms Shake-up in Dental Services
Up to one thousand patients could lose their NHS dentists as part of a shake-up in dental services on the island. The Isle of Wight NHS Primary Care Trust has confirmed that surgeries in Cowes and Carisbrooke will stop providing general dental services, which will leave some patients without a dentist.
Health bosses have decided to focus on specialist dental services at the surgeries at health centres in Carisbrooke and Cowes and East Cowes, which will include orthodontics, oral surgery and treatment for prisoners.
The centres will stop providing general dentistry in March 2012, but the NHS has confirmed that alternative arrangements will be made for those patients affected by the shake-up. Caroline Morris, head of dental commissioning at the trust, said that the trust will make sure that no patients are left without a dentist. Currently, the trust is providing too much general dentistry and money will be better spent by altering the system to encourage private dentists to take on NHS patients and improving access to specialist services.
The changes have been met with scepticism, as there are no NHS surgeries accepting new patients on the island at the moment. However, Caroline Morris said that the trust is working to extend the capacity of existing practices and a new surgery is due to open in East Cowes. The PCT has invested a huge amount of money in dental services in recent years and the percentage of people registered with an NHS dentist has risen from less than 26 percent to over 50 percent since 2006.
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