Emergency NHS dentistry - minor winge

[numtumfutunch]

I chipped a tooth yesterday morning

On phoning my longstanding NHS practice they said they didnt have any emergency slots, or cancelled routine slots, and all are allocated at 8AM on a daily basis and to call back the next day.

I call today at 7:59 and get the out of office message then again at 8AM on the nose and the phone is picked up immediately. Im fairly sure I must be the first person to be connected, second at an absolute push.

"Hello Sir we can do 230PM or 415PM and thats all"

Eh? Is this representative of emergency provision?

Its a big practice with 5 regular partners and many more associates and part timers.
Would they really only have 2 emergency slots available at random times? Thinking about it is there any obligation for them to offer an emergency service as the ad hoc nature suggests I may have just been offered 2 cancelled routine appointments.

Cheers - at least I have an NHS dentist.................

[MacGee]

if its an emergency , wont you take any time youre given?

[Rollin]

A chipped tooth isn't an emergency. Well not in the eyes of NHS England anyway.
We have 2 emergency slots per day at 3pm. Practices can't have lots of spare appointment times left open, there are targets to meet.

Edited by Rollin on Wednesday 18th October 09:47

[C0ffin D0dger]

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me, they gave you a slot same day for something that's not exactly life threatening.

[numtumfutunch]

All perfectly reasonable replies, but my point is that a large city practice had 2 emergency appointments for the whole day

I wondered if this was normal and indeed it seems so, the emergency service relies on last minute routine cancellations

[IrateNinja]

Funnily enough I did something similar on Monday evening. Whilst flossing I pulled a filling from a tooth I chipped playing football a couple of years ago.

In the morning rang up my (NHS) practice who offered me a 10:30 appointment, which due to work I couldn't make, but then got me in and fixed at 15:30.

No complaints with that at all.

[Riley Blue]

You phoned at 8:00am and were offered an appointment six and a half hours later - how lucky can you get?!

[Henners]

Just to irk you, I needed an appt a year or so back.

Called and was asked if I could be down in 15mins!

[Brainpox]

It's a balance isn't it?

If they find that 2 emergency slots is generally enough then that's all they'll have.

If they ran into a period where they had 10 people phoning for an emergency appointment every day it would change.

An empty room with a dentist twiddling his thumbs doesn't make money, therefore extra slots would be kept to a minimum.