NHS dental data monitoring report
Quarter ending June 2025

About this release

This release by Public Health Scotland (PHS) provides an overview of certain metrics of activity including registrations, participations, contacts and NHS spend, since reform introduction. It includes the transitional period of payment changes, introduced on 1 November 2023, as the Scottish Government implemented an NHS dental payment reform. 

Main points

As at 30 June:

• 5,215,114 people were registered with an NHS dentist (95.7% of the Scottish population).
• 620,695 extensive clinical examinations were carried out under the new pay arrangements. In total, over 3.87million have been undertaken since the NHS dental payment reform was introduced.
• Children and adults from the most deprived areas (SIMD 2020) were less likely to have had contact with NHS primary dental care (47,417 compared to 55,339 for children and 134,487 compared to 156,574 adults).

This is a bar graph of the number of patients who had contact with NHS Primary Dental Care; by SIMD quintile; quarter ending June 2025;Scotland. The graph is split by adults and children. The quintile with least contact for both adults and children is quintile 1. There is an upward trend of contact as quintile's increase with exception of quintile 5 which has a slight decrease from quintile 4.

Close

Number of patients who had contact with NHS Primary Dental Care; by SIMD quintile; quarter ending June 2025; Scotland ¹

¹ Based on the month the claim was paid/authorised. Following completion of treatment, dentists have up to 3 months to submit a claim. As a result, the payment month may differ from the month(s) the patient had contact with NHS Primary Dental Care.

Background

Dental claims are submitted by NHS dentists for activity monitoring or to claim payment for treatments and associated fees. The Statement of Dental Remuneration (SDR) lists all the Items of Service (IOS, i.e. treatments and associated fees) that can be claimed. On 1 November 2023, the Scottish Government implemented an NHS dental payment reform. As part of the reform, a new list of 45 IOS (Determination1) that can be claimed for general dentistry was created. This is to make it simpler for both dental teams and patients to understand.

The activity (treatments) data in this report primarily focuses on are Determination I codes which are reported in full. However, the number of examinations claimed using old SDR codes have also been published to demonstrate the continued level of activity being claimed under the old payment arrangements.

Financial data reflects the overall level of claims, including IOS claims made across the old and new payment arrangements. The Public Dental Service (PDS) have separate contractual arrangements, and therefore their payments are excluded from this report.

Further information

The next release of this publication will be November 2025.