New NHS dental patients treated by local health board and patient type
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General description
This data shows the number of new NHS dental patients treated and the number of new urgent patient treatments (2023-24 onwards only)Data collection and calculation
As part of the dental contract reform programme announced in 2020, dental practices are remunerated for seeing new patients and data on new patients has been collected since April 2022. The aim of capturing new patients is to count those who are newly registered with an NHS dentist for routine treatments. There is a separate measure to count the urgent treatments of new patients, who may not be registered to an NHS dentist for routine appointments.New patients are defined as: A unique count of patients at each NHS dental contractor who started a Band 1, 2, or 3 treatment with a complete ACORN in the year, whose previous Band 1, 2, or 3 treatment at the contractor was completed more than 48 months prior to the ACORN; or who have not previously been treated by the NHS dental contractor.
For 2023-24, the period to count new patients was adjusted to count Band 1, 2 or 3 treatments back to 1 April 2019, to recognise the severe disruption to NHS dental services caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
'New urgent patient treatments' are defined as: A count of urgent treatments at each NHS dental contractor that started in the year, for patients whose previous Band 1, 2, or 3 treatment at the contractor was more than 48 months prior to the urgent treatment; or who have not previously been treated by the NHS dental contractor. The same patient can be counted multiple times if they had multiple urgent treatments at the same contract. This data is available from 2023-24.
'New urgent’ patient treatments are not a subset of ‘new patients’ and the same patient can be counted in both measures in the same year depending on the circumstances of their treatment.
