DENTISTS have warned that the Covid Inquiry overlooked the pandemic’s impact on dentistry, risking further damage if “lessons are not learned.”
The British Dental Association (BDA) has submitted new evidence to the inquiry, which shows that dentistry suffered the sharpest single fall in capacity as well as the weakest recovery.
Its analysis found that dentistry had lost a third of all NHS capacity from 2020/21-2023/24 — far larger than the 1.7 per cent for outpatient care, and the 5.9 per cent for A&E admissions.
The BDA says that dentistry was treated like an “optional extra” with the suspension of all routine face-to-face care.
Dentistry leaders warned that the pandemic acted as a “catalyst” for the crisis as the target-based contracts became impossible to deliver.
Since lockdown, more than 52 million NHS dental appointments have been lost in England, the equivalent of over a year’s worth of dentistry appointments, the body says.
Its analysis of government data finds that one in four cannot access NHS dentistry, while 97 per cent of new patients who try to access it are unsuccessful.
Dentistry has only been mentioned twice in the Covid Inquiry — once to confirm a professor’s CV and another highlighting that it wasn’t an “important aspect” for module 3.
BDA chairman Eddie Crouch said: “No part of the health service took such a hit during the pandemic, and none has seen such a limited recovery.
“Yet dentistry isn’t even on the menu at this inquiry.
“At lockdown, dentistry was treated like an optional extra.
“Subsequent failure to deliver needed reform turbocharged existing problems into a genuinely existential threat to the service.
“If lessons are not learned we will see more collateral damage to core parts of our health service.”
Mark Jones, founder of Toothless in England, said: “Government’s management of NHS dentistry before, during, and post-pandemic has been nothing short of incompetent.
“We’ve seen the comings and goings of numerous health ministers who simply didn’t have their hearts in it, nor any understanding of how patients have suffered as a consequence.
“If they did, then they’d have made damn sure something was put in place to fix the dental crisis.
“Westminster has to learn from its past mistakes.”
