Dental practices Scotland to reopen from 22 June

Chief Dental officer for Scotland Tom Ferris has written to say practices can reopen for non-urgent care from Monday 22 June.

This follows the First Minister’s announcement this afternoon about Phase 2 for easing the lockdown across Scotland.

The British Dental Association (BDA) met with the CDO and Scottish Government yesterday to discuss its concerns, including financial support, risk assessment, and extending key worker status to dentists and their teams with access to childcare proving a major barrier to practices reopening in England. 

It warns that a combination of higher costs and lower patient numbers could prove fatal for services in Scotland.

Dates for routine care, including aerosol-generating procedures (AGPs) are yet to be confirmed.  Wholly private practices, which comprise 23 out of the roughly 1,000 Scottish practices, have been open for some weeks now. 

Shortages of PPE are expected place to real limits on patient numbers. While the authorities recently distributed more than three million individual items of PPE to dental practices volumes are only sufficient to enable practices to see around 10 patients a day.