Dental Department HMP Swaleside

Updated 3 December 2019

HMP Swaleside is Category B training prison on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, holding up to 1,111 convicted adult male prisoners, mainly serving very long sentences, either of 10 years or more, or life and other indeterminate sentences. The prison is operated by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service.

Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT) is contracted to provide dental services to men held at the prison. KCHFT is registered with the CQC to provide the following regulated activities at this location: Diagnostic and screening procedures, Surgical procedures and Treatment of disease, disorder or injury.

We undertook a joint inspection of HMP Swaleside with HMIP between 10 and 13 December 2018. During the inspection, we determined if KCHFT was meeting the legal requirements and regulations under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008, and that men in the prison were receiving safe care and treatment. This report can be found at: https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmiprisons/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2019/05/Swaleside-Web-2018-1.pdf

Updated 3 December 2019

​We carried out a focused desktop inspection of healthcare services provided by Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust (KCHFT) at HMP Swaleside in October 2019.

Following our last joint inspection with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) in December 2018, we found that the quality of healthcare provided by KCHFT at this location required improvement. We issued a Requirement Notice in relation to Regulation 9, Person-centred care, of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

The purpose of this desktop inspection was to determine if the healthcare services provided by KCHFT were meeting the legal requirements of the above regulations, under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. 

We do not currently rate services provided in prisons. 

At this inspection we found that the provider had made the following improvements:

• Additional dentist treatment and dental nurse triage sessions had been held to mitigate for sessions cancelled in 2018.
• The provider had scheduled training for prison-based healthcare staff in dental triage to reduce the need for unnecessary urgent referrals.
• Dental appointments had been added to the prison’s daily activity list to improve patients’ access to the service.
• The waiting list management process had been changed to enable waiting times to be monitored more accurately.
• The impact of failures to attend appointments was being promoted within the prison to reduce the number of missed appointments which would then require rebooking.
• The waiting times for routine dental appointments had reduced significantly, although they still remained too high.
• The provider had submitted a business case to NHS England for additional regular sessions at HMP Swaleside to support ongoing patient need.

The areas where the provider should make improvements are:

• Continue to work to reduce the waiting time for routine dental appointments.