Kirsty Rigg removed from Roch Valley Dental Practice books for getting the day of her appointment mixed up

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Roch Valley Dental Practice

Kirsty Rigg has been removed from Roch Valley Dental Practice’s books, for simply getting the day of her appointment mixed up.

Ms Rigg, who has an abscess that requires treatment, booked an appointment for Wednesday 15 February, but turned up a day later.

She said: “I got mixed up because I’ve been so busy.

“I was shocked that as a new patient they wouldn’t let me rearrange the appointment but instead have taken me off their books ‘indefinitely’.

“It was a simple error and I’m surprised there’s no leeway, especially when it’s so difficult to get taken on by an NHS dentist.”

Healthwatch reported in 2014 that just one in five surgeries accept new NHS patients with people travelling up to 40 miles for appointments and people being struck off registers despite having extenuating circumstances. They found the most common problem was finding a surgery willing to take on new NHS patients in the first place, an experience Ms Rigg will now face again.

At the time, Healthwatch stated just under half of the country’s 8,000 dentist surgeries were currently registering/willing to take on new NHS patients, according to figures from NHS Choices.

A spokesman for Roch Valley Dental Practice said: “We are unable to comment on this without any details of the particular patient, and even then, due to legislation around patient confidentiality, we would require their permission.

“We aim to provide a high level of dental treatment to the citizens of Rochdale, which has one of the poorest oral health score indices in the country, and as you can see from our NHS choices reviews, I feel we are achieving this.

“In January, we had 65 hours of wasted appointments due to failure to attend by 239 patients. This makes it extremely difficult to achieve our NHS contractual requirements and failure to do this could result in the practice closing.

“In addition, it results in a significant waste of tax payers’ money and an inability to offer this time to other patients experiencing pain or discomfort. As such we have agreed with GMHSCP that patients who fail two appointments are not seen.

“New patients who fail to attend their first appointment are deemed to be at a higher risk of failing further appointments and are not registered.

“If there is a genuine reason for a failure to attend, patients are invited to write to the manager and ask for this to be taken into consideration in relation to rebooking an appointment.”