DENTISTS on the National Health Service are turning away people with bad teeth because they say they are only paid enough to treat patients with a good dental health record.

One surgery admitted that people who have not had a dental appointment for three years will be refused treatment. Others are employing more subtle methods to reject patients.

Dentists’ leaders say the NHS dental contract, introduced in April last year, has had a perverse effect because dentists earn the same for giving a patient one filling or 10.

The Oakwood Dental Centre in Derby, for instance, says on Derby City Primary Care Trust’s website that it “will only accept patients who have visited a dental surgery within the last three years”. Aneu Sood, who runs the practice, said it had no time to treat those who “need a tremendous amount of work”.

According to dentists’ leaders, potentially unprofitable patients are screened out by giving preference to those patients who have recently been dropped by an NHS practice which has gone private. This sort of patient is likely to have had recent and regular treatment and therefore is unlikely to need extensive new surgery.

Dentists will also take on the relatives of existing patients with healthy teeth in the expectation that family members will need little treatment as well.

Examples of how patients with bad teeth are turned away

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