Returning to normal?

Nigel Jones explores whether NHS dentistry will return to the way it was before the pandemic – and questions if anyone wants it to.

It’s hard to think of a single aspect of NHS dentistry that hasn’t been changed, if not wholly transformed, by the impact of Covid-19.

Everything from the number of patients you can see to the types of treatment you can carry out, from activity targets to the level of PPE you need, have undergone radical changes over the past 15 months.

It seems as if for many of those months we’ve been talking about and hearing the phrase ‘the new normal’. Now, with the vaccine programme going well and a government timeline for reopening society, it feels like that normality is within sight. The big question for NHS dentistry is, does anyone want it to go back to normal?

Activity targets and access issues
At Practice Plan, we’re certainly hearing from dentists who aren’t keen to return to the pre-pandemic levels of patient volumes.