Access to NHS Dental Services: Patient Appointment Success Rates

A weighted percentage indicator measuring patient-reported success in obtaining NHS dental appointments within a two-year period. The dataset is produced by the Government Digital Service and was last updated in September 2017, with a next version due in August 2018. It is available in EXCEL XLS and CSV formats under an Open Government Licence.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in NHS dental service accessibility based on patient-reported success rates.
• Model regional or demographic disparities in healthcare access based on the survey-derived indicator.
• Benchmark performance of dental service provision against other NHS indicators.
• Inform public health policy and resource allocation based on measured patient experience.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from the authoritative Government Digital Service.
• The indicator is clearly defined as measuring patient-reported success over a two-year period.
• Available under a permissive Open Government Licence for reuse.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The last update was in September 2017, which may limit current relevance.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Likely derived from patient surveys or administrative data, as it measures reported experience.

Time Range

Covers a two-year recall period for patient attempts; dataset version from September 2017.

Freshness

Last updated Sep-17; next version due Aug-18.

Geography

Presumably covers the United Kingdom, as it pertains to NHS services.