Providing health and care services in Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes is not just about providing access to services, it is about providing targeted advice on prevention as well, a meeting heard.
How the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care Board (BLMK ICB) will deliver integrated primary care to residents in the four council areas was discussed by the BLMK Heath and Care Partnership on Wednesday (14 December).
The delivery will be based on the Fuller Stocktake Report (May 2022) which sets out a vision for the role of primary care in integrated care systems.
It had four recommendations: Neighbourhood Team Development, Emphasis on same-day Urgent Care, Personalised Care – especially around long-term conditions, and Prevention.
Lucy Nicholson, Healthwatch Luton Borough, pointed out that the BLMK ICB Fuller Programme Plan didn’t have much detail on dental care, which will be a BLMK responsibility from April next year.
The debate on the Plan had focussed mainly on improving GP access and services.
“From a Healthwatch perspective we receive a lot of feedback, concern and worry about how [dental care] has been commissioned,” Ms Nicholson said.
“I think it is something that we need to approach alongside GP surgery access.”
Nicky Poulain, chief primary care officer, BLMK ICB, who had presented the Plan, replied: “It’s reported quite widely that the national [dental] contract is not an easy contract.
“I’m not an expert on this yet, I’m trying to get up to speed, but clearly the contracts make it very, very difficult for a dentist to have, let’s say, a productive practice,” she said.
Ms Poulain explained that the contract did appear to reward the time dentists spent on checkups.
“If you’ve got a patient that perhaps has not seen the dentist for many years and has got a lot of requirements, it is not viable for the average dentist,” she said.
“So that is a challenge.
“Having said that, it’s not all bad, but clearly I think it’s about managing expectations.
“It’s not going to suddenly be us, as the ICB, taking on that delegated commissioning, it’s not going to suddenly be sorted out overnight,” she said.
As an example of making a meaningful impact on dental care, Ms Poulain spoke about working with schools and parents around ensuring children do brush their teeth twice a day.
“[There is] some research taking place with a school about supervised twice-daily teeth cleaning to see what impact it makes,” she said.
“There’s a lot of secondary care data for children where they have got tooth decay and they need sedation to have teeth extracted.
“So I go back to that Fuller report on prevention, we really need to target our efforts about where we’re going to make a difference,” she said.
by John Guinn,
Local Democracy Service
