Community
15 October, 2023
Wait times a tooth ache
WARRNAMBOOL’S public dental system hit the spotlight in parliament recently.
Member for South West Coast Roma Britnell said she believed the public dental system in Warrnambool was in a “shocking state” after the Australian Dental Association (Vic. Branch) revealed the area’s average wait time for general dental care was 38.1 months.
This figure is a threefold increase on the 13.8 months that the average waiting time was in 2014.
In addition, the average wait time is also over a year longer than the current statewide average of 16.9 months.
“In the three years the patient is waiting, they will often endure extreme pain and I have been contacted by constituents who describe their suffering to me,” Ms Britnell said.
“We are talking about important treatments to relieve the pain that the almost 4,000 South West Coast patients on the waiting list face.
“Pain that prevents them from eating certain foods, keeps them up at night and impacts their wider health. Historically, South West Coast has not been an outlier for dental waiting lists.”
Ms Britnell claimed that during the last Liberal Government, waiting times for general dental care from the public dental system in South West Coast were 14 months, only one month higher than Victoria’s statewide average.
In the past decade this waiting list has increased almost 300 percent and is now 19 months higher than the state average.
“The pandemic is not an excuse,” said Ms Britnell.
“The wait time in South West Coast almost doubled between 2015 and 2019, to more than two years.
“I have spoken with dentists in my area, and facilities are not the issue. Warrnambool has five dental treatment chairs, yet currently less than two chairs can be used on a full-time basis due to a lack of staff.”
According to Ms Britnell’s figures, in 2014 over 9,000 patients in South West Coast were treated, however, this total is now under 7,000 patients per year.
