AT least one in 10 dentists across Greater Manchester has quit the NHS rather than sign a new government contract.
The deadline passed for dentists to sign the contract at the weekend. Health chiefs have admitted it is still not clear exactly how many have decided to leave the NHS.
But they confirmed 56 of the region's 552 dentists were known to have gone private, meaning more than 8,000 patients faced losing free dental treatment on the NHS.
Meanwhile, there was further evidence of the crisis in dental care as queues developed at Manchester's University Dental Hospital yesterday. For the third time in 18 months, the M.E.N. found a up to 20 people waiting from 6am on Cambridge Street in the hope of seeing a student dentist for urgent treatment.
At the head of the queue, Catherine Im had been kept up all night by a painful abscess on her wisdom tooth, and waited patiently from 6am in the hope of treatment.
Failed
The 28-year-old teaching assistant from Stretford lost her dentist two years ago when she could not afford to keep appointments every six months. Since then, she has tried and failed to find one taking on new patients.
She said: "I've had this abscess ever since and sometimes it gets so painful I can't sleep. I have to take painkillers a lot of the time. In that time, I've been to emergency centres four times, but each time they just give me antibiotics and send me away.
"The answer seems simple to me - we need more dentists in this city."
The dentists who rejected the new government contracts yesterday began their first day of work outside the NHS today.
They can continue treating existing NHS patients for three months, but from July 1 will be allowed to offer only private treatment. Dentists claim they have been forced to leave the NHS because the new contract would not offer them enough money to offer patients a quality service.
The new arrangement hands over control of their finances to local health bosses, who will guarantee them a salary for at least three years.
John Mooney, a Bury dentist who left the NHS over the weekend, said: "In some ways I regret what has happened, but, at the same time, I feel liberated. Now I am private I can offer the time and quality of care that I think people deserve."
A Greater Manchester Strategic Health Authority spokesman said: "It looks as if nine out of 10 dentists have agreed their contracts to do NHS work."
CLICK here to see our guide to finding a dentist in Manchester.
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Your Statement 8000 patients will not receive free treatment is misleading. As I am sure you know NHS dental treatment is only free to children and patients in an exempt group. This is what is clear to me being a dentist myself but not to your average reader. Please ..acuracy is fundamental at this time.
The guanteed salary has strings attached. Strings that can only be achieved by a reduction in personal income or a reduced standard of service and care which for me is totally unacceptable. If a dentist through no fault of his own fails to reach his target set by the local PCT..they now have real power over the profession ..they will cut the funding and keep cutting it. The new contract I am advised is not legal , has a multidude of variations that are incomprehensible and it remains guesswork as to what exactly will happen after three years..another new contract.??
Its all another con from the government. It goes along the line that we need x amount of plumbers and hgv drivers, so everyone becomes one of the mentioned. We also need x amount of dentists, so people will become dentists thinking they will make a fortune from the practise, the same as plumbers and hgv drivers. Solution: five years down the line, we have more dentists, drivers and plumbers than you can wave a stick at.