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PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Dental Services (21 May 2018)

Question Asked

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the outcome of the pilot programmes on the new NHS dental contract.

Asked by:
Judith Cummins (Labour)

Answer

The Department is committed to the reform of the current primary care dental contract. Over 70 dental practices are currently testing a possible new contract. This trial started in April 2016 and was preceded by a pilot programme that tested a new clinical approach supporting dentists to focus on preventing disease. In the prototype practices dentists continue to use this clinical approach while also testing a remuneration system designed to support this new way of working.

The evaluation report on the first year of prototyping was published on 22 May and is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/dental-contract-reform-evaluation-report-2016-to-2017

Evaluation of the prototype programme is ongoing. The aim is, if further testing shows the approach to be robust, to potentially start rolling out a new system from 2020.


Answered by:
Steve Brine (Conservative)
30 May 2018

Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0.