Timescale given for opening of new Dunbar dental clinic
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A NEW dental facility in Thurso should be open in September or October.
That is the timescale which has been identified by NHS Highland for the £1.2 million unit at the Dunbar Hospital.
The health authority’s dental service development manager, Alex Fraser, will outline the plan in a report which will be before local community health partnership members next week.
She points out NHS Highland is currently negotiating the lease of the Dunbar dental clinic with an unnamed dentist. “It is anticipated that the practice will be open for patients during September
“No standard general dental practitioner lease was available to health boards and, as a consequence, there has been significant learning during the process of the negotiations.”
It is understood NHS Highland will be the first health board to have such a GDP lease in place.
The conditions of lease require a minimum of 80 per cent of the gross income of the practice is derived from NHS dental services. In addition, the practice has to deliver services for 6000 NHS patients.
All of the dentists practising at the clinic will be required to be on the NHS Highland dental list. The provision of private dentistry will be limited by the lease condition that requires the dentist to provide seven hours of NHS dental service at each surgery each day.
The lease also requires the practice to participate in the NHS Highland dental out-of-hours service.
The conditions of lease will be monitored by NHS Highland in conjunction with the Scottish Dental Practice Board. Breach of the conditions would result in the termination of the lease.
The GDP tenant has agreed to prioritise into care all the 4700 people presently on the waiting list for NHS dental services and will build up the practice’s patient list over a number of months.
“Those patients currently registered with the salaried dental team and who wish to access services in Thurso will also have the opportunity to transfer to the new practice,” adds the report.
