This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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Extra £15 million for dental services
23/01/2006
NHS General Dental Practitioners (GDPs) will be able to access £15 million of funding to modernise their premises and improve services for patients, it was announced today.
Deputy Health Minister Lewis Macdonald also announced that NHS Fife is to become a designated area for the payment of recruitment and retention allowances to dentists.
Commenting as he visited an NHS dental practice in Fife, the Minister said:
"I am delighted to be able to make these further announcements today. We are committed to facilitating better dental facilities and increased access for NHS patients across the country.
"This allocation will give high-street dentists the opportunity to improve their premises, where previously they may not have been able to afford to.
"I am also pleased to be able to announce that Fife will become a designated area for dental support. This announcement will aid the recruitment of dentists in Fife by offering additional incentives to attract people to work in the area. NHS Fife just last Friday received funding for five dental developments through the premises modernisation fund and this further boost will help them to attract the extra staff they will now require.
"We are yet again underlining our ongoing commitment to tackle the dental challenges affecting particular areas of Scotland and to deliver improved dental services for patients.
"I have made it absolutely clear that my priorities are to reward dentists who are committed to the NHS and to restore the balance so that patients who want to access NHS dental services can do so, wherever they live in Scotland."
This funding has been allocated from the dental action plan funding. The £15 million support package is split in two. The first element includes a total of £10 million (£5 million per annum) to be available to independent GDPs over the next two years (from April 2006) and can be used to:
- Develop new and extend existing premises in areas of unmet need or demand
- Improve existing premises e.g. internal improvements; meeting DDA requirements; meeting the needs of children or the elderly
- Relocate to modern premises
- Provide temporary accommodation pending relocation or upgrading of existing premises
- Take over existing premises to ensure continuity of NHS services
The second element includes a total of £5 million (£2.5 million per annum) support the improvement of practice premises and facilities for cleaning and decontamination of instruments.
We announced a massive funding package in March 2005 - an extra £295 million over three years, of which 80 per cent will go directly to high-street GDPs - no other Government in history has invested so much in Scotland's dental care. This will build up over three years, from £200 million in 2004/05 to £350 million by 2007/08.
Scottish Executive figures show that more than one third of the 1900 non-salaried general dental practitioners in Scotland have gross NHS earnings of between £100,000 and £250,000 a year, and two thirds continue to have significant earnings from NHS dentistry.
Under the Primary and Community Care Premises Modernisation Programme 2004-06, NHS Fife received £250,000 for a new dental access centre in Kirkcaldy. The funding will provide a new 4 surgery dental access, centrally located in a flat conversion adjacent to the Whyteman's Brae Hospital site in Kirkcaldy. This will provide both access to general dental services, emergency dental services and a facility suitable for outreach training for dental therapists from Dundee Dental School.