Dentists shortage sees Telford practice scrap non-urgent NHS treatment
A Telford dental surgery has said it has had to stop offering non-emergency NHS treatment due to a shortage of dentists.
The branch of Mydentist in Tan Bank, Wellington, has had to tell its clients they can no longer accommodate requests for NHS treatment after two of its dentists left.
A patient at the practice, who didn't want to be named, said: "No reason given to me other than my dentist had left.
"I rang to confirm and asked them is if they'd just scrapped NHS treatment and the receptionist I spoke to confirmed that was in effect the case and told me how the dentistry industry is in difficulties."
He added: "It's essentially forcing NHS patients to go private. Which is a pretty poor state of affairs locally. A quick search on NHS England shows there are no dentists taking on NHS patients in Shropshire at the moment."
A spokesperson for Mydentist said the issue was specific to the Tan Bank branch and was not a policy at the national dental provider.
She added: “There is an acute shortage of NHS dentists across the UK and, in common with many practices across the UK, this is having an impact at our practice in Wellington.
"While we continue to actively recruit new clinicians to join our team, following the recent departures of two dentists the practice is operating with limited NHS capacity.
"Although our practice team is working hard to treat as many patients as is possible, this does mean that we are currently unable to accommodate all requests for non-urgent NHS treatment.
"We apologise to patients who have been impacted by this and we are working to resolve it.”
Has your dentist stopped taking on NHS patients? Get in touch at richard.williams@mnamedia.co.uk
