Urgent dental help
From July 2025, Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust’s Dental Helpdesk will directly book patients into urgent and additional hours dental appointments across Kent and Medway.
This change is part of a wider initiative to improve access to NHS dental care and reduce pressure on other parts of the health system.
Urgent appointments are defined as:
a) Urgent unscheduled care: Patients who may require clinical care within 24 hours or as soon as practically possible, unless the condition worsens.
b) Non-urgent unscheduled care: Patients requiring dental care within 7 days, unless the condition worsens.
The full NHS England service specification has details of the conditions that will be treated: Urgent unscheduled and non-urgent unscheduled dental care.
Additional hours appointments can offer dental stabilisation treatment following an urgent appointment but can also offer urgent treatment for targeted cohorts of patients:
- pregnant and peri-natal people
- local authority looked after children (LAC)
- care home residents who can travel to a dental practice
- vulnerable population groups including asylum seekers and refugees, homeless people
- Romani people
- armed forces family members
- patients that are clinically vulnerable (e.g. immuno-suppressed patients, oncology and cardiac patients, patients requiring oral health stabilisation before cardiac surgery, cancer treatment or, patients who or prescribed bisphosphonate medication. This is not an exhaustive list)
Patients can call the helpdesk on 0300 123 4412. It is open Monday to Friday from 8am to 4pm.