About Us

The South West Local Dental Network (LDN) is hosted and supported by NHS England South West. The LDN enables dental stakeholders to share ideas and feed back to the regional and national teams. This is a great opportunity to influence delivery of NHS dental services across the whole dental pathway including primary care, hospital and community care, in and out of hours.

  • A small clinically-led Steering Group at the core
  • Engagement with the developing Managed Clinical Networks across the South West including the Orthodontic MCN, Restorative MCN, Special Care/Paediatric MCN, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery MCN and an urgent and unscheduled dental care group.
  • Engagement with the wider community of practitioners, practice owners and others involved in providing services, as well as patients and stakeholders.

The aims of the Dental LDN are to provide a vehicle for clinically led and clinically owned delivery of:

  • Quality improvements
  • Best outcomes for patients that reflect local need
  • Best use of NHS resources
  • Planning and delivering integrated care pathways
  • Strategies for service planning and health improvements
  • Leadership and engagement
  • Workforce planning and development

The structure of the South West LDN is based on a three layer model: a core group of commissioners, MCN Chair, PHE, HEE and localities, a larger group which includes MCN and LDC members and an outer supportive network of stakeholders and partners.

Local Dental Network Matthew Jerreat, LDN Chair, South West

We hold dental clinical senior management team meetings weekly with all Managed Clinical Network chairs and every four weeks we are joined by Local Dental Committee Chairs.

As Local Dental Network Chair I attend weekly meetings with the NHSE/I Medical Directors ensuring that the dental voice is heard at regional clinical meetings.

Within our South West dental clinical networks, there are some significant pieces of work underway from developing referral forms from primary care through to specialists in secondary care, to pathway development for TMJ/Trauma/Apicectomies/HANC/Hypodontia.

 

Managed Clinical Networks

The Dental LDN is supported by a number of Managed Clinical Networks (MCNs) that feed into the main LDN meetings. You can find out more about these on our Managed Clinical Networks page.