Dentist has space for 7,000 patients

10:05am Friday 21st July 2006

MORE than 7,000 desperately needed NHS dentist places have been created with the opening of a new £400,000 practice this week.

The Trowbridge Dental Centre opened at Staverton Marina on Monday, replacing the existing Adcroft Dental Centre, which has operated from the Adcroft doctor's surgery for the past nine years.

The new practice will be able to offer dental care to 20,000 NHS patients, compared to the 13,000 patients on the books at Adcroft, but only 2-3,000 will be able to register right away.

Stuart Chidgey, director of Community Dental Centres Ltd, which runs the practice, said: "This is fantastic news for NHS dentistry in Trowbridge.

"With so much negative news concerning the closure of NHS community hospitals in Wiltshire, CDC is delighted to make this major investment in NHS dentistry in Trowbridge."

The move has been supported by the beleaguered West Wiltshire Primary Care Trust, which is in the midst of a shake-up of healthcare to resolve debt problems.

There were four dentists at Adcroft, the same number as are now operating out of the Staverton centre, but the increasing demand for places meant the practice had outgrown the rented facilities available within the doctors' practice.

There is room for a six-surgery practice to ensure future demands in the town can be met, but the PCT has said it is unable to fund extra dentists at present.

Mr Chidgey said: "We have had a lot of patients coming down to register in the first few days and we are very pleased.

"We can take on an extra couple of thousand as we are but there will come a time when we have to return to the PCT and say we will have to stop registering until we have funding for more dentists, as we have to manage the workload for our dentists and the service to our patients."

Access to NHS dentists in west Wiltshire is a growing problem as more and more dentists chose the more lucrative private sector.

A survey undertaken by the West Wiltshire Citizens' Advice Bureau last year revealed eight out of ten people looking for an NHS dentist in west Wiltshire had been unable to find one.

Seventy per cent of those taking part in the survey said they had gone without treatment because they could not afford to travel to the nearest dentist able to offer NHS spaces.