Chief Dentist

at  NHS Bath and North East Somerset Swindon and Wiltshire ICB

From 1st April 2023 BSW ICB assumed delegated responsibility for commissioning dental services (including acute, community and primary care), general ophthalmic services and pharmaceutical services. The ICB is developing a Primary Care Dental Strategy for the system which will take the elements of the NHS Southwest roadmap, namely, access, oral health improvement and workforce and ensure local delivery, in part, by building partnerships with those delivering dental services in BSW and with residents using local dental services.
The Chief Dentist role, is a key new role with NHS BSW ICB to lead, shape and inform our strategy for the future commissioning of NHS dental services, that deliver a consistent offer to patients of high quality, patient centred services building on best practice to deliver continuous improvements to accessing dental care for people living in BSW.
This role will require evidence of current clinical NHS dentistry practice.
The post holder will provide solution focussed, dental leadership for ICB strategic plans, working with dental practices and the wider ICB team and community and acute providers to improve the quality and effectiveness of the services. Ensuring full engagement of dental primary care by inputting on the development and implementation of local system plans to progress the ICB’s dental strategy plan.
These posts are not intended to compete with the Managed Clinical Network (MCN) roles which are speciality driven and include: urgent care, paediatrics, Health & Justice, oral surgery, stabilisation, cancer access, specialist settings and specialised care.
System leadership training could be provided as required.
The Clinical Lead must demonstrate confidence and professionalism by showing a sincere interest in leading the clinical and management team and inspiring others. Please see the ICB Dental Governance Structure diagram.

1. Dental expertise to and oversight of the dental strategy priority areas; Workforce, Access and Oral Health promotion.
2. Dental advice to ensure accuracy of dental communications from ICB staff (for example when responding to respond to media enquiries or addressing complaints)
   Currently the organisation has a hybrid approach to working, with colleagues based both at home and in the office. The ICB hosts a number of offices across the BSW region.
   For this role, the post holder will be required to travel throughout large parts of BSW and flexible working is expected.
   Leadership of dental strategy
   Providing Dental expertise to and oversight to the ICB in developing and implementing strategic plans including leading and supporting access improvement plans.
   Responsible for leading the cocreation of system dental policy and policy implementation related to the commissioning of dental services in BSW. To lead service development for the Primary Care directorate related to the commissioning of dental services.
   Workforce development within the system
   Responsible for leading the cocreation, development and implementation of training pathways for dental care professionals across BSW, working in conjunction with NHSE Workforce, Training and Education team
   Input on dental care professional’s pathway in joint working with Bristol Dental school.
   Strategical oversight of local apprenticeships development with available College providers.
   Providing strategic leadership for workforce development, through assessment of clinical skill-mix and development of ICB workforce strategy.
   Engaging dental clinical teams and expertise
   Influencing, leading and supporting the development of excellent relationships across the ICB to enable collaboration for better patient outcomes.
   Establish and maintain relationships with people working in dental clinical teams within BSW.
   Establish effective collaborative working to help ensure the ICB meets local and national priorities and action plans.
   Establish good communication with key partners such as the Local Dental Committee (LDC) and Healthwatch and to support the ICB to build their relationship with key partners.
   Improving Quality and Outcomes
   Responsible for holding staff to the highest integrity by adhering to all government regulations and obligations under the General Dental Council.
   Provide dental expertise to support the ICB to commission innovatively.
   Present to the ICB feedback received from dental clinical teams, NHSE, et al on clinical needs assessments, service delivery, quality, treatment outcomes, cost-effectiveness and equity of access data; so that information may be used to inform ICB commissioning plans.
   Support the ICB to develop recruitment and retention plans to make flexible and efficient use of dental skills & capacity available including developing a range of new offers such as dental fellowships.
   Communicate with the ICB where a need for further education has been identified with suggestions on how the need can be met.
   Enabling Patient and Public Involvement
   Support the promotion of an open and transparent policy of public engagement.
   Ensure effective and regular interaction with patient and public groups in respect of feedback and consultation on ICB proposed workplans.
   To act as a champion for patients and their interests in respect of the strategy development and decision-making of the ICB.
   Accountable for leading the system development of strategy, planning, assurance and delivery of dental services in BSW.
   Promoting Equality
   Ensure that the ICB consider improvement of care that specifically address health inequalities.
   Uphold organisational policies and principles on the promotion of equality.
   Using insight and evidence for improvement
   Provide and receive highly complex, highly sensitive and potentially highly contentious information. This could include:
   Communicating complicated clinical matters for inclusion in multi-stranded business cases.
   Communicating with dental contractors about reduction or ending of contract where there could be significant barriers to acceptance and the environment may be hostile, antagonistic or emotive.
   Data will be used to support all activities, including identifying opportunities for service improvement; identifying and understanding variation in practice, and suggesting and developing proposals to address this to the ICB. Support targeted engagement intervention as required to support the ICB to ensure that commissioning activity is delivered.
   Make judgements involving highly complex facts or situations. Analyse, interpret and compare a range of options. Options may include several components and expert opinion may differ.
   Use dental expertise to make judgements about situations which are unique to dentistry taking into accounts complexities which do not have obvious solutions.
   Improve data available to produce insight by designing and developing information systems to collate dental data. Explore incorporation into the BSW Integrated Care Record to support both direct patient care and commissioning of services.
   Information Governance
   To ensure compliance with confidentiality and governance.
   To always adhere to professional codes of conduct.
   Research and development
   Influence the BSW Research and Innovation Strategy to ensure research and innovation relating to dental services are appropriately represented.
   Coordinate and implement research and development programmes relating to dental services.