Oakley Vale dental practice to reopen under new provider amid nationwide shortages
Two local dentists have stepped in to reopen a dental practice in Corby.
In June of last year, the Bupa Dental Practice in Oakley Vale closed its doors, leaving thousands of patients without a dentist and exacerbating the growing national problem of dental shortages.
Now local dentists Avi Bhundia and Ketan Panchal are opening a new dental practice, aiming to provide much-needed care to the community.
The new practice in Butland Road will be called Chancery Dental.
The Bupa closure added to the increasing issue of ‘dental deserts’ across the country—areas where there are either too few dental practices to serve the local population or existing practices are unable to accept new patients.
This situation left countless people without access to essential dental services.
The Dental Centre in Elizabeth Street, Corby, one of the largest NHS dental practices in Northamptonshire, has served the community for more than 50 years with a solid reputation for quality care.
However, the national shortage of dental practices taking on new patients has overwhelmed even well-established practices like this one.
"With a shortage of practices taking on new patients and a lack of dentists to service the population, we have been getting hundreds of phone calls from patients wanting to join us,” said Avi Bhundia, who runs the Elizabeth Street Practice along with Ketan Panchal
"We want to help as many patients as possible, but we cannot take on everyone and have reached our capacity.”
The new site does not have an NHS contract—a significant hurdle since the NHS dictates which practices can see NHS patients. Nevertheless, without Avi and Ketan's initiative to reopen this site, many patients would have been left without any options for dental care.
Ketan Panchal explains, "It is a plan-based practice where we are trying to make dentistry as affordable as possible. Unable to simply open NHS practices, we have tried this model in Thrapston and in Duston, and it has worked really well."
Chancery Dental is expected to open its doors at the end of June.