7. What steps is the Welsh Government taking to reduce waiting times for NHS dental care? OQ59040

Under their contract reform arrangements, dental practices focus on prevention and needs-based care rather than providing routine check-ups every six months to all patients. As a result of this shift, more than 123,000 new patients have gained access to an NHS dentist thus far this year.

Thank you for that answer.

You'll know that NHS dentistry is something that I've raised with you time and time again in this Siambr. I'm concerned to hear again that we're hearing about these additional appointments—120,000 we've heard before, and I think 130,000 you said this time—

It's 123,000.

It's 123,000, I beg your pardon. Thank you for the correction. In my conversations with dentists and the British Dental Association, I hear that they cannot actually deliver those appointments for new patients because practices do not have the capacity. Existing patients, they say, are facing further delays because new patients are likely to need significant follow-up work. I'm told that many practices, unable to meet their contracted targets, are having their funding clawed back by health boards and, as a result of the uncertainties, are reducing their commitment to or even walking away from NHS dental work altogether. I wonder if I could ask you, when you say that there are 120,000 new appointments, are these actually new appointments or just the equivalent funding? Will you commit to meeting with the British Dental Association in order to discuss this further? Thank you. Diolch yn fawr iawn. 

Thanks very much. Those are 123,000 new appointments that have actually taken place. There is a lot of noise around this, but these are the facts, that actually we have 74,000 new patients who are adults who have been seen, and 49,000 new children who have been seen who weren't being seen before. Of course, when you introduce something new, there is a little bit of difficulty and tension in the system. Obviously, if we're going to pay people to do a job, they need to deliver on that job, and if they don't deliver on that job, yes, we are going to claw back money. I'm not going to apologise for that, because we are the guardians of the taxpayers' money as well. That is the deal. You pay for a service, if you don't deliver the service you're not going to get paid. So, they may not like that, but I'm afraid that is the situation. The fact is that, actually, fewer than 20 contracts have been handed back out of the 413 that exist in Wales. So, as I said, there is a lot of noise, but in reality, most people—the vast, vast majority of dentists—have moved over to this new contract. 

Of course, it is easier to do a six-monthly check-up on somebody with healthy teeth than to see somebody new who perhaps hasn't been seen for a long time and then to have the need to see somebody in more detail afterwards. But we are doing this very deliberately. We need people to see dentists who haven't seen a dentist in a long time. So, I'm not going to apologise for the contract that we've put in place. What I will say is that I am, of course, happy to meet with the BDA—I know you have very strong connections with them. But perhaps we do need to just make sure that there is a real understanding of what we're trying to achieve here. We're trying to achieve this in the face of very severe financial constraints where we have to maximise the ability of the taxpayer to get as much as they can from the system.