Councillors get their teeth into dentist issue
South Kintyre’s councillors have reacted with dismay to the admission by an official that health chiefs are unable to deliver a dental service in Campbeltown due to a lack of funding.
A report to the Argyll and Bute health and social care partnership (HSCP) referred to the town’s independent Dalriada Dental Practice experiencing recruitment issues, resulting in the HSCP putting in place interim measures, including dental registration in Lochgilphead.
This arrangement was queried by Oban North and Lorn councillor Kieron Green at a meeting of the HSCP’s integration joint board last Wednesday (January 25).
Fiona Davies, HSCP chief officer, said in her report: “To help support the practice, while it continues to actively recruit for new dentists, the HSCP has offered three slots for emergency care per week to help reduce pressure, and also made the student clinic in Campbeltown available to provide a course of treatment to unregistered patients in the area, subject to suitability of cases and the capacity that students have to provide treatment.
“Following consultation with the general dental practitioners in Kintyre and Mid Argyll, the HSCP is also offering NHS dental registration to all unregistered patients living within the Kintyre area.
“This registration will be with the dental department at Mid Argyll Hospital and Integrated
Care Centre in Lochgilphead.”
Councillor Green asked: “Is that somewhere people are being offered appointments in Campbeltown and the practitioners travel down, or are people expected to make their own way to Lochgilphead?
“I also saw that we have £17,000 worth of savings for vacant posts within the dental service, and £89,000 of allocated reserves for the mobilisation of the dental service.
“Do we really have the capacity to take this on within the public dental service, and how are we using this to support services in general?”
Evan Beswick, NHS Highland’s head of primary care, said: “You have no right to be registered with a dentist. You have a right to be registered with a GP, which is why, if practices are in difficulty, the HSCP has to step in.
‘You have no right to be registered with a dentist.’
“It is not the same with dentistry. The only way we have to supply this is where we have specific permission from the Scottish Government to do that.
“Can we afford to provide a service to Campbeltown? The answer is no; we are not funded to do that. A dental practitioner having difficulty does not change that.
“We have gone back to ask if we can provide this and been told there is no funding. What we are doing is somewhat piecemeal and driven by a couple of factors. There is the need to support patients as best we can, which is through the student clinic.
“We have made the offer to Campbeltown patients. It is not ideal and you are right identifying the travel issues, but there is a way we can support patients rather than being a single solution.
“The reserves are money given to us for specific purposes, and what we are doing is repurposing that with permission from the Scottish Government. A limited number of dental practitioners have said they want to take advantage of the fund.”
Councillor Donald Kelly said he was “appalled” to discover that insufficient funding was a reason for a lack of dental provision in Campbeltown.
“Like many others, I have been pursuing this issue for quite some time and my understanding was that lack of available personnel was the main issue,” he said.
“It is totally unacceptable, from a practical and affordable point of view, to expect people from Campbeltown to travel to Lochgilphead on a regular basis to receive dental treatment.”
Councillor John Armour described the limited dental provision in South Kintyre as “disturbing”, adding: “Many requiring dental treatment don’t have the means or time to make the 100-mile round trip to Lochgilphead for treatment.
“Brexit has obviously not helped with recruitment and retention of dentists.
“Before Brexit, foreign dentists did not require a visa to work in the UK, and their qualifications were automatically recognised. But, things have changed now; dentists trained in the EU/EEA countries now need to go through a points-based system to acquire a working visa and seek dental jobs.”
Councillor Tommy Macpherson said: “I picked up our community’s concerns [about this] in September last year, which ran parallel with the Scottish Government announcement that ‘multiplier’ payment rates to dental practitioners would reduce and be phased out by April 2023.
“All-encompassing medical services as we knew it, for the peninsula, are a thing of the past.”