MORE people in Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster are seeing a dentist following controversial NHS reforms.
New figures obtained by The Star show most of South Yorkshire - barring Barnsley - has seen an increase in the number of dental appointments during the last two years - bucking the national trend.
The statistics from the Information Centre for Hea
lth and Social Care show that in December last year 356,336 patients in Sheffield had seen a dentist at some point during the previous two years.
This was up from the 343,378 patients who in March 2006 had seen a dentist during the past two years.
The number of children in the city who had seen a dentist during the previous two years increased from 86,684 to 88,957 over the same period.
Rotherham saw an increase in the number of dental appointments - 141,580 patients had seen a dentist once in two years by December 2007 compared to 134,571 in March 2006.
In Doncaster the number jumped from 192,224 patients to 199,127.
In contrast, the number of patients who had seen a dentist in Barnsley within the previous two years fell from 140,325 in the month before the introduction of the contract to 139,198 in December 2007.
There has been an overall drop in dental services nationally since the introduction of a new dental contract in April 2006, designed to improve the quality of care and end the "drill and fill" culture, in which some dentists sought to slash waiting lists and carry out quick fixes.
Dentists used to be paid a fee for each item of treatment they provided, but they now receive an annual income in return for carrying out an agreed amount of work.
But despite the shake-up, almost 900,000 fewer people in England saw a dentist in the two years to December 2007 than in the two years to April 2006.
MPs on the Commons health select committee this week exposed how patients are having their teeth extracted unnecessarily since the contract's introduction.
The committee's report showed the contract's success had been patchy, stating that "although in some places access to dentistry has improved since 2006, it remains uneven across the country".
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