Agenda item

(To receive a report from Jane Green, Assistant Contract Manager, Dental and Optometry, NHS England – Midlands and East (Central Midlands); and Jason Wong, Chair, Dental Local Professional Network, which provides the Committee with an overview of the NHS dental services commissioned in Lincolnshire and update on the current challenges and commissioning intentions to improve NHS dental services and oral health across Lincolnshire)

Consideration was given to a report from NHS England – Midlands and East (Central England) and the Dental Local Professional Network which provided an overview of the NHS Dental Services commissioning in Lincolnshire and an update on the current challenges and commissioning intentions to improve NHS dental services and oral health across Lincolnshire.

Jane Green (Assistant Contract Manager, Dental and Optometry, NHS England – Midlands and East (Central Midlands)) and Jason Wong (Chair of the Dental Local Professional Network) introduced the report and explained the local context.

The Central Midlands Local Office was responsible for commissioning NHS primary community and secondary care dental services and had two locality teams who managed dental and optometry commissioning.  Lincolnshire formed part of the North Locality which also covered Leicestershire and Rutland.

There were currently 72 contracts within Lincolnshire providing NHS dental services, one of whom was piloting a new prototype dental contract to test a new remunerations system.  This blended activity and capitation (patient registration) and aligned to financial and clinical drivers to focus on prevention and continuing care. 

The report highlighted that the following Local Authority areas in Lincolnshire had access rates below the NHS England and Leicestershire and Lincolnshire average:-

·       Boston (children and adults);

·       Lincoln (children and adults);

·       South Holland (children and adults); and

·       North Kesteven (adults)

These outcomes had been reviewed by the local office in addition to patient engagement and consultation feedback and it was agreed to commission new contracts as part of the dental procurement programme in order to improve access to general dental services in priority areas identified within the resource envelope:-

·       Boston;

·       Lincoln;

·       Sleaford (North Kesteven); and

·       Spalding (South Holland)

The Local Office were supporting the Chief Dental Officer Smile for Life initiative and had launched the 'Starting Well' programme in Leicester and Luton.  The learning from this programme would be fed into the Lincolnshire area in due course.

During discussion, the following points were noted:-

·       The actual figures of the regional and national averages were not available but would be provided to the Health Scrutiny Officer after the meeting;

·       Access rates rather than waiting lists were used to choose new areas for practices in addition to the population rates;

·       The nearest dental colleges to Lincolnshire were in Birmingham and Sheffield and trainees seemed to return to those areas following training placements in Lincolnshire.  NHS England were also working on foreign recruitment of dentists so this could also be considered in improving retention;

·       Smile for Life had held a launch event with eight sites commencing in Leicester City on 1 February 2018.  There was not a separate dental budget as this formed part of the overall primary care budget and the difficulty had been trying to stress the importance of this initiative.  Due to funding, it was not expected that this initiative would be rolled out in the near future;

·       Some schools in Lincolnshire were running initiatives in dental health and it would be helpful if more could be done to support and promote this.

The Chairman requested that a progress report be presented to the Committee in six months.

RESOLVED

1.    That the report and contents be noted; and

2.    That an update report be added to the Committee's Work Programme

NOTE:       At 1.26pm, the Committee adjourned for lunch and reconvened at 2.15pm.

Councillors R H Trollope-Bellew, M T Fido and Dr B Wookey submitted apologies for the afternoon session of the meeting.