About NHS Dental Care in UK

Many UK citizens are now confused with NHS dentistry. It seems to be difficult to determine what are the costs, available treatments and your rights as NHS patient. Every patient should be able to access high quality dental service. With NHS, you don’t have to register with a dentist. Patient simply finds the dental practice nearby home or work, phone found dentist and see if there are available appointments. In case you are not sure if they provide NHS care, ask them. (For example, if you are in Glasgow, look for NHS dentist in Glasgow.)

NHS dental treatment is free for patients under 18 years of age and those under 19 if they are in full-time education, pregnant women (and if their baby is up to 12 months old). Also, patient does not have to pay for NHS treatment if staying in NHS hospital (and there NHS dentists carry out the treatment). Usually, dentists do both NHS and private practice. Therefore, patients are usually confused about whether the dentist alone can decide what treatments to do on the NHS and what privately. You should know that every treatment that dentist consider to be clinically necessary to keep patient’s teeth, gums and mouth healthy should be done on the NHS. If patients needs something, that should be covered by the NHS. However, teeth whitening is not clinically necessary, but the cosmetic treatments and patient has to do it privately.

In case patient is unsatisfied with the received NHS dental care or in case someone is not sure whether the offered service was not correct, it is important to contact the dental practice. Patient can also contact local PCT (primary care trust) which commissions dental services in certain area. General Dental Council is also there to give some advice, because GDC is there to protect all dental patients, NHS and private.

*If you are looking for NHS dental practice in Glasgow, check out http://www.1smile.co.uk/ for the high quality dental care.