Жители севера Уэльса все чаще обращаются к стоматологам в Англии: доля пересеченных границ пациентов выросла до 9,3%

Nearly one in eleven adults in north Wales who saw an NHS dentist in the two years to March 2026 was treated in England. Welsh Government figures published on 27 August show 16,842 adults living in the Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board area were treated at NHS dental practices in England, out of 180,406 treated in total. That is 9.3 per cent, up from 6.1 per cent in the two years to March 2019. The rise is not because more people are crossing the border. The number of north Wales adults treated in England went up by fewer than 350 over those seven years, from 16,525 to 16,842. Over the same period the number treated inside Wales fell from 252,440 to 163,564, a drop of more than a third. The pattern for children is different. In the 12 months to March 2026, 4,626 children from the health board area were treated at NHS dental practices in England, up from 3,519 in the year to March 2019. That is 8.4 per cent of north Wales children treated, compared with 4.9 per cent seven years earlier. The number of children treated inside Wales fell from 68,499 to 50,753 over the same period. North Wales accounts for a small share of NHS dental patients in Wales and a large share of those treated across the border. The health board area covers 17 per cent of all Welsh adults treated by an NHS dentist, and 56 per cent of all Welsh adults treated in England. For children the figures are 18 per cent and 55 per cent. Only Powys has a higher rate of patients treated in England, at 17.0 per cent of adults and 19.5 per cent of children, though the numbers involved are smaller. In the four health board areas covering south and west Wales, fewer than two per cent of adult patients were treated in England. Across Wales as a whole, 40.6 per cent of adults were treated by an NHS dentist in the two years to March 2026, and 50.5 per cent of children in the 12 months to March 2026. Both figures remain below where they stood before the pandemic, by 11.3 percentage points for adults and 8.1 percentage points for children. The figures count patients by where they live rather than where they work, and a patient is counted once however many appointments they had. Around two per cent of patients each period cannot be matched to a country of residence, so the cross-border totals run slightly low. Patients treated in Northern Ireland or Scotland are not included. The Betsi Cadwaladr area runs from Anglesey to the Flintshire border, so the figures cover the whole of north Wales. The Welsh Government does not publish a Wrexham breakdown of cross-border dental treatment. The two pandemic years distort the trend, because far fewer patients were treated in Wales in 2021 and 2022 while cross-border numbers held up. This is the last set of figures produced under the NHS dental contract that ran until 31 March 2026. A new contract took effect on 1 April 2026, changing how patients are recalled and how treatment is recorded. The Welsh Government said the change will likely break the time series for many of these measures, which means the figures published on 27 August are the final comparable baseline. The next set of dental figures is due in November, and will include the workforce data that was not ready for this release. The full dataset is published on StatsWales, and the statistical release is on the Welsh Government website. (Thanks to our sister site Deeside.com for this data article!) Add Wrexham.com as a preferred source on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search.