Accessibility of Dental Practices Working Group
The aim of the DDA Accessibility of Dental Practices Working Group was to establish if the issue of physical accessibility to NHS dental practices was still present in Oldham following the work previously undertaken by the Patient and Public Involvement in Health (PPIH) Forum. The group gathered this information, presented the findings of their survey with a series of recommendations to NHS Oldham in order to improve the current situation for the residents of Oldham.
The Oldham Advertiser is delivered to 83,505 households in the borough of Oldham; the survey was included as an insert within the local Oldham Advertiser newspaper at the beginning of June 2009, as a means of reaching as many residents as possible in the borough. It was felt that this method of research would be far reaching and enable those who may not usually participate to have a stronger voice and influence change to services for the better.
The survey is made up of 7 short questions, with some of these being tick boxes and the others free text. The group were conscious that they wanted the form to be as simple and easy to complete as possible, so not to overwhelm people. Click the link below to view the survey, you may recognise it, or even filled it out, if so thank you.
The report is available to download below:
Following the LINks recommendations, NHS Oldham responded to the LINks report in December 2009, please click on link to view their response.
NHS Oldham has agreed to:
- Encourage practices to make structural changes to their premises to improve access, where this is reasonable, and will commission new dental services with due consideration to disability access and requiring full DDA compliance for ‘new builds’
- Information will be available on the dental list that shows DDA compliant practices
- The dental helpline service will be trained to match practices accepting patients to individual patients needs as far as possible
From the results of this survey, although there are some issues around accessibility of dental practice premises, the issue of accessing an NHS dentist seems to be more of a significant issue and a greater concern for action. This will therefore be presented to the LINk Governance Group for consideration in its future work plan. This piece of work is able to provide the LINk with a good evidence base to make its decision as to whether to pursue this issue.
Accessibility of Dental Practices in Oldham Survey
Oldham Chronicle Article about the survey conducted to find out whether Dental Practices in Oldham are easily accessible for disabled people. (click the link below to view)
