Selaine Saxby, MP welcomed The Rt Hon Victoria Atkins MP, Secretary of State for Health, to North Devon District Hospital to discuss the Future Hospitals Programme and Dentistry.
The main thrust of the meeting was to see and discuss plans for the phased build of the hospital estate. Starting with the staff accommodation element planning to be submitted shortly. The visit follows Lord Markham’s visit in August last year in which he confirmed and provided the seed funding for this planning phase, as well as the Prime Minister in September.
Selaine said:
“We were also able to hold a round table with local dental providers and health authorities about how the government’s dental catch up schemes would be implemented here and across the peninsula, and hear about improvements in NHS dental availability already here in North Devon.”
Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Victoria Atkins, said:
“It was a privilege to meet staff and patients here at North Devon District Hospital, and to see for myself the exciting progress being made in upgrading the estate as part of the government’s New Hospital Programme.
“I was hugely impressed by the incredible dedication of staff working in the hospital’s intensive care unit and operating theatres, and by the compassion and care they show their patients day in, day out.
“The Trust’s plans for upgrading these areas as part of its Our Future Hospital programme will provide staff with state of the art facilities that will support them in continuing to deliver world class care to patients from across North Devon for many years to come.”
Sam Higginson, Chief Executive Officer at Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, said:
“I was delighted to welcome the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to our hospital. It was wonderful to showcase the work of our talented colleagues, and to share how important investment is helping us to begin upgrading our estate, so that we can deliver the best possible care for local people, now and in the future.”
The dentistry round table was a chance for local dentists and health providers to discuss with the Secretary of state directly the problems that we are seeing in dentistry overall but also the specific recruitment challenges that we see in North Devon and the south west.
Ian Mills , Associate Professor of Primary Care Dentistry at the University of Plymouth said:
"Patients continue to have problems accessing NHS Dentistry across the UK, and this is particularly acute within rural and coastal communities such as North Devon. Recruitment and retention of dental professionals to the area is a major factor and it is important that we explore how we can train more dentists, attract them to the area and encourage them to work within the NHS.
This will require radical changes at a national and local level, and it is hoped that the visit of the Secretary of State to North Devon will have brought this into sharp focus."
