NHS Dental Statistics, 2008-09

Statistics on NHS General Dental Services activity and the number of people seen include data for Wales for the year ending 31 March 2009. The latest release updates the statistics previously released on 21 August 2008.

Activity between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2009:

• A total of 5,055,900 (rounded to the nearest hundred) Units of Dental Activity were done, representing 2,350,500 individual NHS dental courses of treatment.
• In 2008-09 the highest proportion of courses of treatment (52.7 per cent) was within Band 1 (routine examinations, scaling and diagnostic procedures).
• Band 2 treatments (fillings and extractions) was the band with the largest proportion of Units of Dental Activity (UDA) with 42.8 per cent of the total in the year.
• The total number of Units of Orthodontic Activity (UOAs) credited in Wales was 205,150.

Patients treated

• 1.6 million patients were recorded as having been treated in the 24 months before 31 March 2009 amounting to 55.2 per cent of the population. 65.7 per cent of the child (under 18 years) and 52.3 per cent of the adult population (18 years or over) were treated in the previous 24 months.  

Workforce in the year ending 31 March 2009:

• There were 1,293 dentists with NHS activity recorded on FP17 forms.
• There were 4.3 dentists per 10,000 population.

Patient charges between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2009:

• 40.9 per cent of all courses of treatment were for paying adults, the total patient charge for which amounted to £27.5 million.

Experimental Statistics providing analyses for England and Wales of a range of dental treatments recorded in the new clinical dental dataset have been published by the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care.

Further information

StatsWales website

NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care website: Dentistry

Contact

Tel: 029 2082 5064
E-mail: stats.healthinfo@wales.gsi.gov.uk

Next update

November 2009 (provisional - to be confirmed on Due Out Soon page)