AQW 19983/17-22

Ms Claire Sugden
Independent
East Londonderry

Tabled Date: 07/06/2021
Answered On Date: 17/06/2021
Priority Written: No

Question:
To ask the Minister of Health to detail (i) the number of dentist surgeries that treated (a) only private; (b) NHS and private; and (c) only NHS patients, in each of the past five years; and (ii) the number of patients who paid for private dentist treatment in each of the past five years.

Answer:

Information on dental practices that carry out health service dental work is collected by the Business Services Organisation. The number of General Dental practices that carried out health service work between 2017 and 2020 is shown in Table 1 overleaf. The number of these practices which carried out only health service work in each of these years is also shown in Table 1. All other practices are providing private treatment to some extent. The number of practices providing only Private treatment is not collected centrally and is not available. Also, data is not held on private dentistry treatment, so the number of patients who paid for private treatment is not available.

Table 1: Total number of General Dental practices that carried out health service work and the number that carried out only health service work, 2017 - 20201,2

Year1	Total number of Dental Practices1	Number of purely Health Service practices2
2017	376	4
2018	377	5
2019	376	5
2020	372	3
31st December 2020	369	-

1 Source: Business Services Organisation. The number of active dental surgeries at 31st March each year. The number of active surgeries at 31st March 2021 is not available until the annual release of the FPS General Dental Statistics 2020/21 publication on 22nd June 2021; as such the latest figures at 31st December 2020 have been given.

2 Source: Health and Social Care Board. The number of purely Health Service Practices is provided by Calendar year. These practices are a subset of the total number of dental practices, so are included in the total number of dental practices. However, note that this data is not part of the BSO General Dental Statistics publication.