Emergency dental care facing an overhaul

PATIENTS needing urgent dental care in the East End could find it easier to get an emergency appointment under plans to give the service an overhaul. Health chiefs are proposing that residents across North East London including Tower Hamlets, who call t

PATIENTS needing urgent dental care in the East End could find it easier to get an emergency appointment under plans to give the service an overhaul.

Health chiefs are proposing that residents across North East London including Tower Hamlets, who call the NHS out-of-hours service or visit the walk-in centre at the Royal London Hospital, be assessed before seeing a dentist.

The Royal London in Whitechapel and the South Hornchurch Clinic in Essex are home to the only walk-in dental centres in the area and often patients queue for hours during the evenings and weekends to see a dentist.

But under the proposed plans it will not be the emergency patients who are turned away as those needing dental care within 12 hours or needing a weekend appointment will be seen at the centres.

And non-emergency cases will be referred to another dentist in the borough.

Patients in the effected boroughs including City & Hackney, Newham, Redbridge, Havering, Waltham Forest and Barking and Dagenham have until November 30 to have a say on the plans.

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