Urgent dental care pathway – NHSE London guidance
NHS 111 London Dental Triage Service has been extended from an out of hours service to a 24/7 service to support practices manage urgent or emergency dental patients. Below is the pathway for these patients.
- Patient with urgent or emergency dental needs calls their usual dental practice.
- All dental practices have been asked to establish (independently or by collaboration with others) a remote urgent care service, providing telephone triage for their patients with urgent needs during usual working hours, and whenever possible treating with:
- Advice
- Analgesia
- Antimicrobial means where appropriate.
- Following the telephone triage by the patient’s dental practice, any emergency or urgent cases, or if the patient is COVID-19 positive, should be informed that they will be referred to the Dental Triage Service via 111, this will mean a second layer of triage.
- Once the Dental Triage Service has assessed the patient, if they do need an onward referral this will be made to one of the Urgent Dental Care Hubs (which are being established and are dependent on the service available at the time of call). In a number of cases the patient will then once again be assessed by the clinician before they are booked in. This is to ensure they have all the information about the patient as well as any COVID-19 concerns.
We would therefore ask practices to ensure when you refer patients to the Dental Triage Service you inform the patient that there is a likely chance the patient will have to go through another two clinical assessments, due to the limited number of appointments and services during this pandemic.