Another Humza special
Scottish dentistry in crisis as ScotGov announce plans to withdraw emergency funding, meanwhile SNP conference floats a truly bizarre new idea about free toothbrushes.
Scottish dentistry is in crisis as it slowly emerges from the pandemic. As a result of lockdown restrictions and social distancing rules, the industry is facing a backlog of over 3.5 million lost dental appointments. Furthermore, dental treatments have collapsed by more than 75% last year. It is at this moment the SNP government in Holyrood is proposing its plans to cut off emergency COVID funding to the industry by April 2022.
According to the British Dental Association (BDA)
“the return to a 'business as usual model' – low margin and high volume – will put practices under unsustainable financial pressure and will likely lead to closures or movement to the private sector.”
Humza Yousaf’s note issued to all NHS Scotland dental teams highlights just how removed from the realities the Health Secretary is. The fact is, if Mr Yousaf wanted to yank the rug out from beneath the NHS dental profession he couldn’t have found a better method of doing it. Expecting a swift return to the ‘high volume, low margin’ business model of the dental industry is simply not feasible.
According to David McColl, Chair of the British Dental Association's Scottish Dental Practice Committee
“Dentists are facing an unprecedented backlog, as we continue to work to restrictions designed in the first lockdown.
This new data underlines the sheer perversity of government plans to pretend COVID is yesterday's news.
Withdrawing emergency funding will pull away the life support from hundreds of dedicated NHS practices serving communities across Scotland.”
Public Health Scotland has revealed that COVID restrictions led to 3.5 million lost dental treatments. Scottish adults in 2019-2020 underwent 4,110,580 dental treatments. But last year (2020-2021) due to the pandemic this number collapses to just 966,904.
Furthermore, with children 471,290 treatments (2019-2020) falls to just 113,386 courses of treatments (2020-2021). If we add this all up we discover a staggering 76.4% drop.
It is in this context that the SNP and Humza Yousaf wants to withdraw emergency funding from the industry. David McColl was not wrong to brand this as “perverse”. The truth is, the pandemic has had a disproportionate effect on dental service provision. And if the SNP persist with their plans with pretend the pandemic is yesterdays news and swiftly withdraw the funding - NHS dentistry will disintegrate. Workers with move across to the private sector if SNP plans for a swift return to ‘high volume, low margin’ become a reality.
But the amazing thing is the SNP also think this might be the right time to pledge “free” electric toothbrushes to kids. They might not be able to see a dentist as the industry collapses, but they can brush their teeth with a “free” electric toothbrush bestowed by Nicola Sturgeon.
The Castle Douglas and Glenkens branch of the SNP plans the motion for the SNP’s ‘digital conference’. Having pledged free bikes, free laptops (recycled pledge) the SNP conference will now consider if they want to take their obsession with ‘free’ electronic devices even further.
The group’s motion includes plans calling for the implementation of “free dental packs” (baby boxes?) containing “a toothbrush and fluoride toothpaste”. But the bit that comes across as truly Orwellian is the the bit on “supervised toothbrushing, to children under the age of five”. The party of the Named Person Scheme - which wanted to a state allocated employee to act as “guardian” for every Scottish child is now considering “supervised toothbrushing” time.
All this talk of state appointed guardians and “supervised toothbrushing time”, I can’t help but remember the scene from 1984, where Winston is doing his state-sanctioned morning exercises
Sources:
Times ‘Give an electric toothbrush to every child, SNP urged’
Scotsman ‘Withdrawal of Covid support in Scotland will be 'devastating', warn dentists’
If you enjoyed this article and are not already a subscriber, please consider clicking the button below