There are 1,763 people on Manx Care’s waiting list for NHS dentists as of July 2022, with people waiting an average of 141 days to be assigned to a dentist.

The longest wait for patients who have specified a specific practice or area is 932 days or about 30 months, with the longest for those who have not specified being 11 months.

Manx Care currently contracts private dental practices to provide services on its behalf, with 11 practices providing for NHS patients on the Isle of Man at the moment, alongside the emergency Community Dental Service.

A Freedom of Information request in February of this year revealed that there were 2,236 people on the ‘dental allocation list’, which dates back to April 2019, meaning it has decreased by about 450 in six months.

Manx Care says that since the answer to that Freedom of Information request had been given, 1,166 new patients had been added to the list and 1,521 had been allocated places.

This creates a gap of about 100 people that have been taken off the list but not been allocated to a dental practice.

This gap, which comes when comparing the ratio of people taken off and on the list to the overall decrease since February, can likely be explained by the process in which places are allocated. Manx Care said: ‘Around 20% of patients either do not respond when they are informed of their allocation to a dental practice, or their contact details have changed and they have not updated Primary Care Services with their details.

‘In this situation, their place will be allocated to another patient on the waiting list (this is made clear to the patient on the letter they receive from Primary Care Services.’

It also revealed that children were given priority when making allocations from the wait list.

Most of the time, if someone is on a practice’s patient list but does not attend an appointment for two years they are removed from the list, which opens up a position for someone on the waiting list.

Manx Care said it was unable to provide a figure for how many patients this has happened to as the individual providers hold their own lists.

A page on the government’s website currently lists all NHS dental providers as having ‘currently no vacancies’.

The island’s situation is similar to the UK where a recent BBC investigation found that nine in 10 NHS dental practices were not taking on new adult patients, and eight in 10 were not taking on children.

Anyone who is not currently placed with a dentist and requires emergency dental treatment is able to attend the Community Dental Service which is based in Douglas and can be contacted on 642785.

Since ‘business as usual’ began in April 2021, there are an average of 208 patients added to the list a month with an average of 261 being assigned places in the same period.

There are about 30 private dental practices available in the island, including those that are contracted to provide NHS covered care, with the majority based in Douglas.

Anyone who would like to be added to the allocation list should email [email protected] or ring 642694.