Desperate patients extract their own teeth as 11million wait to see an NHS dentist amid exodus

Millions of Britons are unable to get an appointment with an NHS dentist, with some resorting to pulling their own teeth.

We can reveal a huge increase in 'unmet need', with one in four adults unable to get an appointment, languishing on a waiting list, put off by long waits or the cost.< /p>

New analysis from the GP survey suggests 11 million people in England were in one of these situations last year, up from four million in 2019.

We can also reveal that "high need" patients are being turned away from dentists due to a faulty national payment contract.

And some try home dentistry before taking out loans to pay for treatment abroad.

The Health and Social Care Committee have launched an inquiry after finding the way NHS dentists are paid is ‘not fit for purpose’ and the Mirror has obtained evidence which needs to be submitted.

Almost half of dentists plan to go fully private (

Picture:

Getty Images)

A survey shows that half of dentists have reduced the number of NHS patients they see and 43% say they now plan to go fully private.

Dentists blame a decade of budget cuts and a 'perverse' payment contract that doesn't reward the work actually done.

Shawn Charlwood, chairman of the British Dental Association committee which submitted the evidence, said: 'This is a desperate warning from this profession.

"NHS dentistry is at a loss. Every day a broken system remains in place, we lose dentists, while millions of people struggle to access care."

The BDA analysis of the 2022 NHS GP survey indicates that unmet need has increased with each measure.

Nearly six million adults have tried unsuccessfully to get an NHS dentist appointment in the past two years, and 3.6 million have not tried because they thought they could not. be able to get one.

One million people were discouraged by the spiraling cost of NHS dental fees, while half a million people were stuck on a waiting list for an NHS dentist.

A BDA survey of 1,900 dentists reveals that 50 of them say they have reduced their engagement with the NHS since the start of the pandemic - by an average of 27%.

This reduction in NHS work is invisible in official workforce data, where dentists carrying out one NHS check per year are given the same weight as one full-time NHS employee.

BDA says discredited NHS contract is leading to further outflow of NHS workforce.

The proportion of dentists now reporting their intention to reduce – or further reduce – the