The Health and Social Care’s Business Services Organisation (BSO) has today published its Family Practitioner Services General (FPS) Dental Statistics for Northern Ireland 2019/20.
The report contains high level summary information on activity and payments in relation to General Dental Services. Information is provided at Northern Ireland level with further breakdowns presented at both Local Commissioning Group and Local Government District (LGD) level.
The publication is available on the Business Services Organisation’s website at:
http://www.hscbusiness.hscni.net/services/3173.htm
Key Points
The key points from the 2019/20 Report are:
Dental Services
- In Northern Ireland there were 372 dental practices with 1,147 dentists registered to carry out health service treatments at the end of March 2020. Whilst this represents a small decrease of 2% in practice numbers since 2014, the number of dentists has increased by 9% during the same time period. There are 60 Dentists per 100,000 Residents.
- At Northern Ireland level, 94% of the population live within five miles of a dental practice, with at least 88% of the population living within three miles in more urban LGDs.
- The number of female dentists now exceeds males, currently making up 57% of the workforce. This trend is particularly noticeable in new dentists, with females comprising 68% of dentists aged under 35.
- Just under two-thirds (64%) of the population are registered with a health service dentist. Children are more likely to be registered with a health service dentist than adults (75% compared to 61%).
- Females are more likely than males to be registered with a dentist (67% compared to 61%), this difference is particularly striking in the 18-44 age group with 71% of females registered compared to just 55% of males.
- For children, the proportion of the population registered with a dentist in March 2020 increases with decreasing levels of deprivation, from 65% registered in the 10% most deprived areas in Northern Ireland compared to 80% in the 10% least deprived.
- Of those registered, 21% of children received treatment for a filling in 2019/20 compared to 34% of adults. Both rates have been steadily declining for the last 7 years. Extractions have also seen a steady decline over the period down to around 6% of registered children and 9% of adults. Note that this does not include any extractions performed in a hospital setting.
- In 2019/20, just over 7% of children received orthodontic treatment, a fall since new eligibility criteria were introduced. However, there has been an increase in those under the age of 13 receiving orthodontic work, rising by almost one-fifth (18%) since 2013/14.
- Looking at individual ‘Item of Service’ treatments, almost 884,000 examinations were performed on adults in 2019/20, while fillings on baby/milk teeth was the most common children’s item claimed, making up 9% of their overall total.
- There has been a 12% drop in the number of teeth filled in NI children per 100,000 population over the last 4 years however NI has consistently remained the highest of the 4 UK regions.
- In 2019/20, the net cost of primary care dental services in Northern Ireland was £104.9 million, with patient payments contributing an additional £26 million. The average cost per registered patient was just over £86.
Notes to editors:
- This is the first year that separate reports have been released for each of the main FPS service areas, replacing the FPS compendium published in each of the last two years. This report was produced by the Health and Social Care’s BSO which was specified as an Official Statistics producer body under the Official Statistics Order (Northern Ireland) 2012. It provides the definitive source of figures on BSO FPS General Dental Services activity and finalises the provisional quarterly figures which have been released over the course of 2019/20.
- FPS is responsible for annual payments in excess of £870 million to primary care contractors including GP Practices, Dentists, Opticians and Community Pharmacists on behalf of the Health and Social Care Board.
- The data relate to BSO’s General Dental Services payment and volumes claimed and have been sourced from administrative systems. It is important to note that, unless otherwise stated, figures relate to the year in which a payment claim was processed by BSO and this may not necessarily coincide with when the actual activity took place (i.e., some claims from a previous year may be processed in the current year whilst, conversely, some claims relating to activity in the current year may not be processed until a later year).
- Primary care statistics on number of dental practitioners are taken from lists of performers registered to provide these services. The lists maintained by BSO provide a headcount rather than full-time equivalent figures so takes no account of differences in hours worked or changes to practitioner working patterns over time.
- A change was introduced on 1st April 2014 whereby only patients with an Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need score of 3.6 or higher would be eligible for health service orthodontic treatment.
- This publication introduces an analysis of dental registrations by Multiple Deprivation Measure (MDM). The information is broken down into MDM decides, each approximately containing 10% of Northern Ireland’s population. Dental registration is assigned to the MDM area of where the associated patient resides.
- Whilst a number of UK comparisons have been included in the report, there can be important differences in how services are delivered between countries that can impact on the figures. The relative size of the private sector in the delivery of primary care services within each country will be a particularly important factor in this regard so care needs to be taken when interpreting any inter-country differences in HSC activity levels.
- The report itself presents high level summary information with all of the detailed data tables consigned to the accompanying Excel appendices. The figures are prepared and released by independent NISRA statisticians working within BSO’s FPS Information Unit.
- Quarterly updates for 2020/21, for key report tables, will be released on a provisional basis on the FPS section of the BSO website http://www.hscbusiness.hscni.net/services/3173.htm. These will be added to the historic quarterly series. The timetable for the release of the quarterly updates will also be published on the BSO website and all publications, both quarterly and annual, will be formally announced on the UK.Gov release calendar https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/announcements
- Electronic copies of the Bulletin and associated Excel tables are available free of charge from: http://www.hscbusiness.hscni.net/services/3173.htm
Official Statistics
This is an Official Statistics publication and therefore follows the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. You can find further information about the Code of Practice at:
https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/code-of-practice/
Further Information
For further information please contact:
Information Unit
Family Practitioner Services
Business Services Organisation
2 Franklin Street
Belfast BT2 8DQ
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