One of the key changes in the 2026 reforms to NHS dentistry is the mandated unscheduled care element. This now sets a new target for contractors, requiring 8.2% of their NHS contracts to be performed as unscheduled care. This new requirement slightly broadens the definition of urgent care. In NHS England’s guidance they describe unscheduled care as:

• Emergency unscheduled care (immediately life threatening oral and dental conditions) should receive clinical triage within 60 minutes, and subsequent treatment within a timescale that is appropriate to the severity of the condition
• Unscheduled urgent dental treatment within 24 hours
• Unscheduled non-urgent dental treatment within the next seven days.

Practices will be able to provide mandated, unscheduled care to existing and new patients.

Our ICB has communicated with contract holders stating the level of unscheduled care that each contract must provide – this is then left to the individual contract holder to arrange. However, the ICB does have some discretion with the target and can change this depending on locally driven factors. However, and this is down to the contract holder to discuss with the ICB.

Each unscheduled CoT attracts a total payment of £75 which consists of:

• A fixed credit of £15 per mandated CoT, which is paid to the practice as a block payment monthly, retrospectively, (so not linked to individual attendance). This will set out separately on schedules and marked as "unscheduled mandatory requirement"
• An activity credit of £60 once treatment has been delivered and the CoT has been claimed.

CoTs delivered above the mandated level will just be paid at the rate of £75 activity credit.

All the payments will be converted into UDAs on the schedule based on the contracts base UDA value.

Currently, SOE will display 1.6 UDAs for an unscheduled CoT. This is because SOE does not have the exact contract UDA value and is using an average across England. This will be automatically updated as soon as the NHS return a payment schedule for urgent treatment. The schedule will inform EXACT of the practice's UDA value for urgent treatment and apply it from that point onwards.

The BDA have provided advice for associates (performers) and contract holders (providers) on how to manage this new target and how to arrange renumeration including the £15 fixed credit between the provider and performer. These can be found at the BDA website along with these helpful webinars – however you may have to be a member to access this:

NHS UDA contract changes England

NHS Contract (England) - Owners (webinar recording)

NHS Contract (England) - Associates (webinar recording)