
Local NHS Bosses say they are still working on improving dentistry services in Bridlington.
The town has just one NHS dentist practice and efforts to attract more to the town last year ended in failure.
Simon Cox from the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care Board says one idea is bring more trainee dentists to the town on placements.
"Dentistry clearly remains a challenge, we did run an unsuccessful procurement last year and we are currently running a procurement this year to try to secure a new provider for dentistry in Bridlington.
That will be a long process and it's unlikely that we will have that operation until next year. However, we need to do that correctly, even if it takes more time.
And we are also working with the current dentistry provider in Bridlington to develop them as a training centre which will allow us to potentially bring more trainee dentists to Bridlington, some of whom may stay."
Simon Cox says the training centre idea is s one of a number of measures being taken to try and improve dental provision in Bridlington.
"The NHS has been trying to make more capacity available in other areas outside of Bridlington. I think some additional capacity was provided last year in Hornsea for example.
There is 'my dentist' in Bridlington. So there is a dentist providing some NHS services, but it remains a challenge. And until we're able to secure a lot of additional capacity there won't be as good access to NHS Dentistry in Bridlington as we would like.
This is again why we are engaged in a major procurement this year to secure additional capacity.
So in terms of getting to where we want to get to with dentistry in Bridlington, that isn't going to be resolved in the next few weeks, but it is part of our medium term plan."
Comments
Add a comment