The Community Open Day at our new Harleigh Road Dental Centre on Saturday 18th May, which opens to patients towards the end of the month, was a great success. Our team enjoyed meeting so many people, including many local residents, and especially hearing such fond memories of this lovely building particularly from its days as a grammar school. Everyone’s positive feedback about our range of dentistry services, friendly professional team, community ethos and superb transformation of the building has left us feeling so positive about the future there – and of course it was a perfect opportunity to celebrate National Smile Month which runs until 13th June!
We were kept busy from 11am right through to 3pm, hosting tours of the dental centre, showcasing some of the facilities that have not previously been available to patients in Cornwall and talking about our work in the community. From our Brighter Smiles oral health programme to our award-winning Smiles at Sea initiative where we take our services to fishing communities across the region who rarely get to visit a dentist, as a community interest company all our profits are reinvested into our community or frontline patient services such as Harleigh Road.
We’re so proud to be bringing this beautiful building in Bodmin back into purposeful use as a brand new, fully accessible dental centre for our community. Our West Country Dental Care team will be delivering routine NHS dental services for existing patients, special care dentistry for patients with additional or complex requirements, orthodontic treatment for young people and emergency dental care alongside bespoke Brighter Dental private and cosmetic dentistry, all from this lovely purpose-designed, patient-centred environment we’ve created at Harleigh Road.
One of the frequent questions we are always asked, and Saturday was no exception, is how to access an NHS dentist. Whilst we are commissioned by NHS England to provide some NHS dental treatments, patients are referred to us via the NHS waiting list and we can only treat those who come to us via this route. Anyone not already on that waiting list is strongly advised to register by calling the Devon Dental Helpline on 0333 006 3300 or emailing accessdentalhelpline@nhs.net.
However, for anyone not on the NHS waiting list or who has been waiting for a number of years and would like more regular dental care, our Brighter Dental private treatments are very competitively priced and we see children for free. Almost 40 people registered to become Brighter Dental patients on Saturday, having seen our new facilities.
