Information is not available in the format requested.
Information on patients treated privately is not collected.
The number of patients registered with an NHS dentist as a proportion of the population, in England, as at 31 March, 1997 to 2006 is available in annex B of the “NHS Dental Activity and Workforce Report, England: 31 March 2006”. Information is provided by primary care trust (PCT) and by strategic health authority (SHA) where appropriate.
This information is based on the old contractual arrangements which were in place up to and including 31 March 2006. This report, published on 23 August 2006, has already been placed in the Library and is also available on the NHS Information Centre website at:
http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dwfactivity
Under the new dental contractual arrangements, introduced on 1 April 2006, patients do not have to be registered with an NHS dentist to receive NHS care. The closest equivalent measure to ‘registration’ is the number of patients receiving NHS dental services (‘patients seen’) over a 24-month period. However, this is not directly comparable to the registration data for earlier years.
Information on the number of patients seen by an NHS dentist in England, over the previous 24-month period, as a percentage of the population is available in table C2 of annex 3 of the “NHS Dental Statistics for England: 2006/07” report. Information is available for the 24-month periods ending 31 March, 2006 and 2007. This information is provided by SHA and by PCT.
This report has already been placed in the Library and is also available on the NHS Information Centre website at:
http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/dental0607
The Dental Services Division (DSD) of the NHS Business Services Authority has recently issued patients seen information at PCT level. However, this was for management purposes. PCTs have recently raised some issues which suggest that the way in which patients are allocated to PCTs across the various quarters needs to be reviewed. This means that sub-national information on patients seen was not included in the “Dental Statistics for England: 2007/08” report, published by the NHS Information Centre on 21 August 2008. The DSD has confirmed that this issue could only have a minimal impact on the national figures. They were therefore labelled as provisional pending the review. An update will be provided in the “Dental Statistics for England: 2008/09 Q1” report in November 2008.