Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Deferred
Mandate practices to adhere to NICE recall guidelines and prevent automatic patient removal
Conclusion
Practices should abide by NICE recall guidelines of up to two years for most adult patients, recognising the need for more regular recall for some, but people should not automatically be removed from dentists’ registers of NHS patients without good reason. This should be monitored by NHS England to ensure it is being carried out. (Paragraph 19) The Dental Contract
Government response summary AI-generated
The government accepts the recommendation but responds by detailing measures unrelated to NICE recall guidelines or patient registration. The response outlines NHS England's guidance on ringfencing dental allocations for ICBs in 2023/24 and measures to address underperforming contractors by rebasing contracts and recommissioning activity.
Summary of the government's response below — read the verbatim text to verify.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government · verbatim extract
Deferred
Accept The Department accepts this recommendation, with the strong caveat that there is no requirement for patients to be registered with a specific dental practice, and practices are obliged to only deliver a course of treatment. Therefore, no formal process is in place to maintain patient registrations, including removal of registrations, although many practices do tend to see patients regularly on a voluntary basis. However, we fully support the recommendation for adherence to NICE recall guidelines. As part of our reforms announced in July 2022, practices have been reminded that urgent dental care should be provided as part of their core service offer to patients, and that adherence to risk based recall intervals and other NICE guidance is a contractual requirement. Last year, NHS England implemented a renewed focus on implementation of personalised, evidence-based recall intervals. With data submitted via FP17 forms, completed by dental practitioners as part of delivering NHS courses of treatment, we are monitoring recall intervals for patients who are identified as having good oral health, with the expectation that these will move towards 24 months. The output of this data is already being shared monthly with ICBs and we are looking to share this more widely with the profession. NHS England have also published a support tool to help practices prioritise their recall lists of child patients here and a further case study can be found here.
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