HUNDREDS of people queued for hours to sign up as NHS patients at a Fishponds dentist.<\/p>\n
People arrived early in the morning when Lodge Causeway Dental Centre said it would open for people to register with an NHS dentist in September.<\/p>\n
The queue snaked from the practice door out onto the Lodge Causeway pavement and around the corner along Russell Road, and often had more than 100 people in it.<\/p>\n
The practice said that in total around 800 people had signed up.<\/p>\n
Among those queuing was Katherine Court, of Fishponds, who was aiming to ensure her two children, aged nine and 12, had the chance to be seen by an NHS dentist.<\/p>\n
The family\u2019s previous practice stopped offering NHS services last year, following several years of repeatedly cancelled appointments.<\/p>\n
Katherine said: \u201cI\u2019m most worried about the children.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve only had two appointments since Covid. It\u2019s a real worry \u2013 if something significant happens, are they going to be seen by anybody?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I haven\u2019t seen a dentist since Covid\u2019<\/p>\n
Another patient, who asked not to be named, had arrived before 8am and was still about 15 places from the front of the queue more than three hours later.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cI haven\u2019t seen a dentist since Covid.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve come from Downend but would\u2019ve travelled further if there was somewhere else offering places before now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tried to sign up online or by phone but couldn\u2019t get through.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an interesting way to recruit new patients but if you\u2019re a single parent, it\u2019s problematic.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A great success\u2019<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the dental practice said the sign-up day was \u201ca great success\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cWe have registered around 800 new patients, many more have been seen on an urgent basis too, eg an NHS appointment to help them out of pain, fix broken tooth or extract damaged teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked why the practice was asking people to join in person on a single day, the spokesperson said: \u201cThis is a much easier way to manage the demand. <\/p>\n
The practice is planning a second event on Saturday October 11.<\/p>\n
The spokesperson said: \u201cWe will have lots more enquiry forms to hand out for those who don\u2019t want to wait as we would like to manage the queues more effectively this time.\u201d<\/p>\n
September\u2019s Voice reported that operator Smile Line UK had applied to the council for permission to convert two vacant first floor flats above the practice into three new surgery rooms. The application is awaiting a decision from the council.<\/p>\n
The government recently announced a \u2018Golden Hello\u2019 scheme to persuade more dentists to do NHS work.<\/p>\n
A spokesperson for the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board, which funds local NHS services, said there are currently 110 practices providing NHS dentistry in the region but it does not hold details of the total number of NHS patients, or the number of places available.<\/p>\n
British Dental Association chair Eddie Crouch said:\u00a0\u201cThese scenes won\u2019t be consigned to history until we see a decisive break from underfunding and failed contracts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HUNDREDS of people queued for hours to sign up as NHS patients at a Fishponds dentist. People arrived…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,12716,4884,105,211,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-478051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-fishponds","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-nhs","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115327150605667484","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}