NHS Dental Services

Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:54 pm on 28 June 2023.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 2:54, 28 June 2023

Thanks very much. Well, dentistry is quite different from the way that people deal with GPs. So, quite a lot of people want to go to a dentist near, for example, where they work. So, the patterns of where people go are not necessarily close to where they live. So, that is something that I think is acknowledged within the system. But, one of the things that we've asked health boards to do now is to make sure that they are keeping lists of people who are looking for new dental appointments. Some are further ahead than others. So, Powys, for example, have a centralised system; everybody knows exactly where they are on the list. So, that's a system that is developed. In Hywel Dda, parts of it are developed and parts of it are not. But, by the end of this year, we're hoping to have one national system so that we can get a much better picture of what the demand is, because part of the problem at the moment is that we're not clear what the demand is, despite the fact that, obviously, the new contract has meant that we have been able to provide an extra 178,000 new dental appointments.

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