Providers will receive a payment on top of their annual contract value for additional courses of urgent treatment delivered under a new scheme.
Practices that deliver 125% above their baseline urgent care delivery will receive a payment of £50 for every course of urgent treatment. This is in addition to the 1.2 units of dental activity (UDAs) that the treatment is worth under the NHS dental contract.
Those which achieve between 117.5% and 125% of the baseline will receive a lower payment of £25 per urgent treatment course. However, those that deliver between 100% and 117.4% will earn no further incentive.
The baseline will be calculated by extrapolating the amount of urgent care delivered between April and July 2025 to form a 12-month average. This baseline will then be shared with participating practices.
The incentive scheme will be available to practices through an opt-in process via integrated care boards (ICBs). Each ICB will contact practices to express interest by 17 October.
Launched on 25 September 2025, the scheme will run until 31 March 2026.
Is the ‘reward worth the risk’?
While the need for more urgent care has been acknowledged, some experts in the dental professional have questioned if the scheme is the best way to achieve it.
Shiv Pabary is chair of the British Dental Association’s (BDA) General Dental Practice Committee. He said: ‘This scheme is a further admission that the NHS underpays for urgent dental care, but there are better ways to pay for it and secure access for patients than what is proposed.
‘We tabled proposals for sessional payments with ministers as soon as they set out that delivering extra urgent care was a priority last summer. This model has a track record of local success.
‘At this stage in the year, it is difficult for dentists to accurately predict how much urgent care – that is demand-led – will be delivered by the end of March next year. Practices will need to decide for themselves whether the reward on offer is worth the risk of delivering additional urgent care, but missing the threshold and receiving just 1.2 UDAs.
‘For practices that have the capacity to deliver extra activity, there is an opportunity to earn extra funding, something that has rarely been on offer since the capped contract was introduced in 2006.’
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