Even if you are lucky enough to already be registered with a dentist, you’ll likely have to wait months. My wife went to a private practice and was told she’d have to wait 6 months or more.
I was removed from my local practice for not going for two years, as if the pandemic and post-lockdown backlog were not the contributing factor in that. Now I am struggling to find a new practice to take me on due to their extensive waiting lists.
A friend of mine went to the dentist and they had a sign that said 10 months NHS, 6-8 weeks Private on their appointments desk. It is kind of ridiculous that dentistry is treated like this special industry when it should be treated just like any other doctor. I have had a lot of serious health issues in my time operations etc. The pain has never been as bad as an exposed nerve in my tooth
I’m sure that members of our government feel that poor people deserve to be in pain. If they didn’t they would surly do something about our dental crisis, no?
Booked in for an emergency apt last month that took a week, i paid the band 1 cost (that includes a check up) for him to stick some fluoride gel on the area and send me away with ‘come back if it gets worse’. Said he wouldn’t do a check up as it’s an emergency apt which I accepted because I didn’t feel like arguing but it stings paying for a certain band of services and not getting them.
Booked in for a checkup. March 2023. 11 month waiting list. Absolute insanity.
It is weird how tooth-care seems to be sidelined in the UK. As though teeth are a luxury for us to enjoy rather than a necessary part of a healthy life.
Eyes too for that matter.
Looking after your teeth and eyes is expensive.
And they will eventually turn up at A&E as genuine emergency cases, overloading the already stretched hospitals.
If I broke my leg, the fact I have not been to a hospital for years would not prevent them treating me.
It’s just BS to get people to go private and charge extortionate prices.
Anybody who has had a bad toothache knows how painful they can be. Where is the compassion , the duty of care, the basic human decency? Fuck that, there’s money to be made.
It’s how the NHS will end up.
I will never understand why dentistry is treated so differently to every other type of medicine. Dentistry should just be a branch of medicine. (like GP, ophthalmology, gynaecology etc).
I haven’t been to the dentist in nearly 2 years. Luckily my dentist was one that opened back up after the initial lockdown with strict covid measures in place and I got an appointment to have a filling. Since then though I’ve been trying to get an appointment for a checkup and each time the dentist has pushed the appointment back by a couple of months each time.
It finally culminated in them just outright cancelling the appointment because my dentist left the practice, the 4th dentist I saw in my 10 years with them to leave. I then had to ring in January to make a new appointment because they can’t hand patients over between different dentists apparently, and was told the earliest available appointment was April. April comes and they again cancel it and put it back to June.
I’m just sat here with my fingers crossed they don’t push it back again.
Just spent £580 to get a filling done privately after being told it would take months to get an appointment on the NHS. Thankfully it went well but thebdentist said that by the time I’d been seen by an NHS dentist it would’ve needed removing entirely.
Just last week I had my 2 back right wisdom teeth removed. The temporary fillings had already worn away after they both collapsed due to a failed filling. I was waiting for 2 months for removal after the collapse and this was *private* care!
Its not just the NHS bookings that have taken a blow, practices barely seem to have more than 1 active dentist now.
I haven’t had access to an NHS dentist in over 10 years
I was kicked off for giving them less than 24 hours notice when cancelling, 3 times. Fair enough I did wrong, but these 3 times were over a span of about 7 years.
‘3 strikes and you’re out’ means I couldn’t find another dentist in my area and since I’m having wisdom teeth issues I’ve had to go private.
I’d much rather have paid a fine as an apology and stayed at my practice.
I managed to get in for an NHS referral followed by a 6 month wait for an actual appointment and filling. My wife on the other hand was told it was 12 months and had to go private… to the tune of £200 in work compared to the £60 I paid
I ended up going to a private one in Durham City to get a check up and scale and polish because Burgess and Hyder are still doing catch up appointments since October 2020.
I shit you not my good lads.
My NHS dentist is going fully private. I have a checkup booked for june but by the end of July they will have fully transitioned to private only. I was offered the chance to stay on as a patient with a monthly payment. My answer was ‘I either have NHS dental treatment or no dental treatment. There is no other option I can afford.’
My only option was to buy a plaque removal tool/drill thing from Ebay. Gonna end up with a drill through my cheek ain’t I…
19 comments
Even if you are lucky enough to already be registered with a dentist, you’ll likely have to wait months. My wife went to a private practice and was told she’d have to wait 6 months or more.
I was removed from my local practice for not going for two years, as if the pandemic and post-lockdown backlog were not the contributing factor in that. Now I am struggling to find a new practice to take me on due to their extensive waiting lists.
A friend of mine went to the dentist and they had a sign that said 10 months NHS, 6-8 weeks Private on their appointments desk. It is kind of ridiculous that dentistry is treated like this special industry when it should be treated just like any other doctor. I have had a lot of serious health issues in my time operations etc. The pain has never been as bad as an exposed nerve in my tooth
I’m sure that members of our government feel that poor people deserve to be in pain. If they didn’t they would surly do something about our dental crisis, no?
Booked in for an emergency apt last month that took a week, i paid the band 1 cost (that includes a check up) for him to stick some fluoride gel on the area and send me away with ‘come back if it gets worse’. Said he wouldn’t do a check up as it’s an emergency apt which I accepted because I didn’t feel like arguing but it stings paying for a certain band of services and not getting them.
Booked in for a checkup. March 2023. 11 month waiting list. Absolute insanity.
It is weird how tooth-care seems to be sidelined in the UK. As though teeth are a luxury for us to enjoy rather than a necessary part of a healthy life.
Eyes too for that matter.
Looking after your teeth and eyes is expensive.
And they will eventually turn up at A&E as genuine emergency cases, overloading the already stretched hospitals.
If I broke my leg, the fact I have not been to a hospital for years would not prevent them treating me.
It’s just BS to get people to go private and charge extortionate prices.
Anybody who has had a bad toothache knows how painful they can be. Where is the compassion , the duty of care, the basic human decency? Fuck that, there’s money to be made.
It’s how the NHS will end up.
I will never understand why dentistry is treated so differently to every other type of medicine. Dentistry should just be a branch of medicine. (like GP, ophthalmology, gynaecology etc).
I haven’t been to the dentist in nearly 2 years. Luckily my dentist was one that opened back up after the initial lockdown with strict covid measures in place and I got an appointment to have a filling. Since then though I’ve been trying to get an appointment for a checkup and each time the dentist has pushed the appointment back by a couple of months each time.
It finally culminated in them just outright cancelling the appointment because my dentist left the practice, the 4th dentist I saw in my 10 years with them to leave. I then had to ring in January to make a new appointment because they can’t hand patients over between different dentists apparently, and was told the earliest available appointment was April. April comes and they again cancel it and put it back to June.
I’m just sat here with my fingers crossed they don’t push it back again.
Just spent £580 to get a filling done privately after being told it would take months to get an appointment on the NHS. Thankfully it went well but thebdentist said that by the time I’d been seen by an NHS dentist it would’ve needed removing entirely.
Just last week I had my 2 back right wisdom teeth removed. The temporary fillings had already worn away after they both collapsed due to a failed filling. I was waiting for 2 months for removal after the collapse and this was *private* care!
Its not just the NHS bookings that have taken a blow, practices barely seem to have more than 1 active dentist now.
I haven’t had access to an NHS dentist in over 10 years
I was kicked off for giving them less than 24 hours notice when cancelling, 3 times. Fair enough I did wrong, but these 3 times were over a span of about 7 years.
‘3 strikes and you’re out’ means I couldn’t find another dentist in my area and since I’m having wisdom teeth issues I’ve had to go private.
I’d much rather have paid a fine as an apology and stayed at my practice.
Also not helping – [Is Brexit Beginning To Bite UK Dentistry?](https://www.gdpuk.com/news/latest-news/4111-is-brexit-beginning-to-bite-uk-dentistry)
I managed to get in for an NHS referral followed by a 6 month wait for an actual appointment and filling. My wife on the other hand was told it was 12 months and had to go private… to the tune of £200 in work compared to the £60 I paid
I ended up going to a private one in Durham City to get a check up and scale and polish because Burgess and Hyder are still doing catch up appointments since October 2020.
I shit you not my good lads.
My NHS dentist is going fully private. I have a checkup booked for june but by the end of July they will have fully transitioned to private only. I was offered the chance to stay on as a patient with a monthly payment. My answer was ‘I either have NHS dental treatment or no dental treatment. There is no other option I can afford.’
My only option was to buy a plaque removal tool/drill thing from Ebay. Gonna end up with a drill through my cheek ain’t I…