title: Referral of child patients from the Community Dental Service to the General Dental Service: one year's experience.
abstract: The Community Dental Service has been encouraged to refer regular attending patients to General Dental Practice whilst maintaining a monitoring system to ensure that referred patients do not 'fall through the net'. The referral and monitoring system run by Halton Health Authority for one year is described. During this period 112 motivated patients were identified as being suitable for referral to general practice. Of these, 85 agreed to referral and 27 refused. Of those referred, 69 subsequently attended but 16 failed to attend and 14 of these did not respond to a further recall by the CDS. Far from acting as a safety net service the CDS may, in pursuing this referral policy, be actually increasing the number of irregular attenders in some localities and for this reason Halton is reviewing the speed with which the referral policy is being implemented.
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zoitopoulos
authors.forename: A M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Jenner
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003149:Community Dentistry / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004739:England; D005792:General Practice, Dental / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006801:Humans; D010352:Patient Dropouts; D012017:Referral and Consultation