NHS & Private Dental Services Provision - April 2022 Onwards

On April 1st 2022, S3 Dental’s involvement in the Dental Contract Reform programme came to an end. The Department of Health after 10 years of testing potential new dental contracts decided to scrap the programme.

This was met with widespread dismay within the profession, as the current system has led to a significant exodus of dentists working on the NHS and is hugely unpopular and unfair to the profession.

NHS England contacted patients from S3 Dental directly and informed them they were no longer registered with S3 Dental. We are disappointed with this approach from NHS England, as it has made it difficult to offer regular care to patients who have attended the practice regularly over the years.

S3 Dental along with dentists nationally had hoped for a reformed dental contract on the NHS to be introduced from the 1st of April 2022, but unfortunately, this has not happened and we are left to work with a broken system that is not fit for purpose.

Nationally there is a huge shortage of dentists working on the NHS due to the poor and unfair working arrangements and we have not been able to successfully recruit dentists to provide NHS care at the practice.

With a heavily reduced workforce, we are currently unable to offer routine NHS care on the NHS. We are focused on providing emergency care to those patients who need it and monitoring vulnerable groups.

For patients seeking NHS routine examinations, we are currently unable to provide this for the foreseeable future , and may not be an NHS practice in the future if urgent action by the government is not taken.

Patients who wish to seek alternative options can consider Private patient registration or our Denplan Membership scheme.

NHS dental care in the current system has unfortunately run out of road, and we await NHS England to make a decision on the future of NHS Dentistry.