Dental Practice Referral Policy

Often practice referral policies (as inspected regularly by the Local Office of NHS England when carrying out practice inspections) do not have sufficient accurate detail regarding the correct referral of dental patients in Surrey either via the Dental Electronic Referral Service (DERS) or when an electronic or paper referral (e.g. for private referrals) and/or initial specialist phone call for urgent cases has to be made.

A typical practice visit checklist for NHS England South East has these questions –

Is there a patient referral policy and protocol?

Is there a named lead person for monitoring referrals?

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NHS restorative referrals from Surrey dentists are now handled using the NEC (REGO) Dental Electronic Referral Service (DERS) service. This service covers NHS referrals for:

Periodontics and Prosthodontics

Sedation (for oral surgery or routine/restorative dentistry)

Special Care Dentistry (Community/salaried service)

Salivary gland/duct dysfunction/dry mouth

Facial Pain

Temporomandibular joint disorder

Trauma