As part of COVID-19 primary care recovery, from 08/06/2020 primary care dental services (general dental practices and community dental services) may open to resume face-to-face care (both routine and urgent) for appropriate patient groups.
While this will re-introduce significant dental activity to local health systems, primary care dental services may still face pandemic related limitations and challenges (eg PPE availability, staffing issues). Therefore, there is still a requirement for delivery of robust and safe urgent dental care services through NHS regional urgent dental care (UDC) systems and primary dental care providers.
NHS England and NHS Improvement (NHSEI) have published the COVID-19 Guidance and Standard Operating Procedure. This document covers a local systems approach to the organisation and operation of urgent dental care (UDC) provision including:
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system-level guidance: of particular relevance to local commissioning teams, local dental networks, local dental committees, managed clinical networks, and local PHE dental public health colleagues
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standard operating procedures for UDC services (in primary dental care settings and designated UDC provider sites): of particular relevance to dental providers and dental teams.