NHS Dental Services
NHS Commitment
In order to be eligible for additional funding independent general dental practitioners must demonstrate 'NHS commitment'. This means:
- A practice must provide NHS general dental services to all categories of patients
- Practices will be required to have an average per dentist of at least 500 registered NHS patients of which on average at least 100 per dentist must be fee paying adults
- Practices must have an average of £50,000 gross NHS earnings per dentist
To remain eligible for the new allowances practices must maintain or increase their NHS patient profile, which is based on the number of patients registered under NHS arrangements as at October 1, 2005. Failure to maintain such a profile without good reason may result in a practice being disqualified from the allowance.
IT and infrastructure
All practices that are NHS committed will eventually be connected to a national clinical system and all practices providing NHS dental services will be connected to N3 (the successor to NHSNet). Forty practices are taking part in a pilot which will run until the end of March 2006.
A website www.scottishdental.org provides the most currently available Scottish web-based dental information. This has been developed by Dental Health Services Research Unit, Dundee, the NDAC-CEP, the Web Development at the University of Dundee and financial support from the Scottish Executive Health Department.