“Dental figures published in the latest Your Hospitals Report shows that Victorians are being forced to wait years for dental treatment with the average waiting time across all public dental clinics at 22.79 months!” says Helen Shardey, Shadow Minister for Health.

“These figures exceed the 22 months projected in the State Budget,” says Mrs Shardey. “An average wait of two years for treatment is unacceptable. Many rural patients are being forced to wait between four and five years!”

According to the Australian Dental Association’s Garry Pearson: “Over half of the rural dental clinics experienced worse results, with 18 suffering an average deterioration of 4.61 months between June and December 2007.”

“The Government has no plans to reduce dental waiting times or dental emergencies which account for more than half the treatments,” said Mrs Shardey. “The State Budget shows the ratio of emergency to dental care is 53:47 which means that more than 50 percent of patients are being treated as emergency cases because they have been forced to wait too long for basic dental care.

“If people were treated in a timely manner their treatment would be much simpler, the fact that they are left languishing in pain often means more complex treatment needs to be undertaken and sometimes results in tooth extraction.”

Of the 58 clinics for which data is available a whopping 30 of them had a deteriorating times for access to general dental care with an average of 3.67 months deterioration.

Some of the worst areas include:

General dental care dentures
Daylesford 44 months (up five months) 21 months (up six months)
Colac 41 months (up six months) 29 months (up six months)
Belmont 24 months (up two months) 29 months (up five months)
Hoppers Crossing 27 months (up one month) 48 months (up two months)
Clayton 11 months (unchanged) 36 months (up four months)
Sunbury 19 months (unchanged) 30 months (up five months)
Lilydale 18 months (up one month) 27 months (up five months)

”With no plan to change the average 22 month waiting time for dental treatment, the Government seems content to believe that this is a reasonable time for Victorians to wait in agony for basic dental care,” says Mrs Shardey.

“How committed is Mr Brumby to helping Victorians when he has increased spending on dental services by a mere one percent?” asks Mrs Shardey.