We want to improve access to dental services and encourage people to look after their oral health.
Our new dental contract reform programme no longer measures performance solely on units of dental activity.
Instead it focuses on:
- prevention
- increasing access to dental services
- using the skills of the whole dental team
- self-care
The work is a priority in our oral health improvement strategy.
It is also part of our Oral and dental services response to our long term plan for health and social care: A Healthier Wales.
Sharing best practice and ideas for improvement will allow us to get more value out of our funding for dental services and programmes.
More than 40% of all dental practices were participating in contract reform before it was paused due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
We are now using the lessons learned to support the recovery process. Comprehensive risk and need assessment for all patients is now in place. This means that practices, patients and health boards can focus on needs, prevention and access to services. We hope the contract reform programme will be able to resume in October 2021.