A new compartment of GIRFT data showing hospital dentistry activity is the latest to be added to the Model Health System, offering metrics across four key specialties.
Around 170 metrics for paediatric dentistry, oral surgery, orthodontics and restorative dentistry are now available in the new compartment, offering contextual data and specific procedural data at site, provider and system level. The metrics enable NHS teams working in the specialty to gauge their performance and target improvements.
To access data for your unit, log in to https://model.nhs.uk/ and navigate to ‘acute hospital services’ > dentistry.
The compartment comprises a list of summary metrics to help provide a specialty overview, as well as specific metrics for four specialties:
- Paediatric dentistry (under 17): including data for extractions, surgery, restorative treatment, dental trauma, and prevention and minimal invasive techniques.
- Oral surgery: including extractions, implants and pre-prosthetic surgery.
- Orthodontic procedures
- Restorative dentistry: including endodontics, periodontics and prosthodontics.
GIRFT’s national report for hospital dentistry was published in 2021 outlining a series of 21 recommendations to improve services. The report, based on visits to 106 hospital dental departments and units across England, showed that while 95% of dental care is carried out primary care, there are more than two million outpatient appointments every year in England, and more than 180,000 people are admitted to hospital for dental procedures, either for an overnight stay or as a day case.
A key focus of the report’s recommendations was to ensure better quality data going forward to help measure clinical outcomes.
Liz Jones, GIRFT’s clinical lead for hospital dentistry, said: “The GIRFT national review of hospital dentistry highlighted significant variation in the availability of data for the specialty, obscuring the national picture of services provided and patient outcomes. As a result, coding booklets have been produced for each of the dental specialties of oral surgery, paediatric dentistry, restorative dentistry and orthodontics which we hope will improve the consistency of recording of activity across trusts.
“The publication of these metrics on the Model Health System enables trusts and systems to see for the first time how their performance compares with others, what’s working well and what can be improved.”
