Kimberley Park Dental Practice, Falmouth NHS service stopped

Patients at Kimberley Park Dental Practice were notified at the weekend that it would no longer be able to offer a large number of them NHS dental care.

The practice says that it has 2,800 NHS patients on its books, many of whom will now have to go private or join the ever growing NHS waiting list.

Moving forward the practice says it will only be offering routine NHS care to its currently registered children under the age of 18 (or under 19 in full time education) and urgent care and to those patients exempt from NHS charges (who the NHS deem to be most at risk).

One patient Simon Davison from Ponsanooth told the Packet that he hadn’t actually been told about the changes yet, but his wife had. He has been with the practice for four years while his wife had been with them six.

Kimberley Park Dental Practice says it no longer offers NHS treatments (Image: Newsquest)

One patient said on Facebook after being told the news that she had been with the practice for well over 20 years while others decried the state of NHS dentistry in the UK.

Mr Davison told the Packet while he could just about afford to go private many people couldn’t and what were they going to do?

“It seems to be happening a lot with NHS dentists across the country,” he said. “Some of us can afford to go private but lots of people haven’t got the money for that. What happens to them? It is not a good situation.

“I will have to private but who can actually afford £700 and more for some treatment?”

In a statement issued to the Packet, Andrew Rowley from Kimberley Park Dental said that it had been a difficult decision to make but it had had no choice after losing three NHS dentists last year and being unable to recruit replacements.

“This was a difficult announcement to make and one we worked hard to prevent for a long time,” he said.

“We appreciate this news is disappointing and frustrating to many, we value our patients highly and have been proud to provide NHS care for so long.

Unfortunately, last year we lost three NHS dentists, one retired and two moved to other struggling local NHS practices.”

He said there is a national shortage of dentists and despite actively recruiting since the summer of 2022 for replacements they have unfortunately not been successful.

“Whilst the way NHS contracts work is extremely complex,” he said. “The fact is that whilst we have done everything in our power to offer ongoing emergency care, this simply is not a sustainable practice and has meant we did not meet our mid-year quota, thereby automatically reducing our NHS contract going forward.

“We would like to thank all our patients for their understanding over the last year, we have appreciated their patience when routine care was unavailable, or moved to accommodate emergency care. We hope that we will continue to see as many of them as possible on an independent basis.”

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He said he wanted to thank his staff who has also gone above and beyond anything he could have expected.

“They have worked exceptionally hard, under extreme pressure in very difficult circumstances and I am hugely proud of them all,” he said.

There are now only four registered NHS dentists left in Falmouth and Penryn, none of which, according the NHS website are taking new patients.

One of them is in a similar situation to Kimberley Park as in it has been unable to recruit an NHS dentist to treat patients for over a year. In a wider picture, according to the NHS website, no NHS dentists across Cornwall are accepting new patients.