NHS dentists in NHS Orkney

Nobody publishes a national list of who’s taking new NHS patients. NHS Inform’s find a dentist tool shows you where they are but not whether they’ve got space, and it tells you to ring and ask. Some boards do put out their own list, NHS Tayside for one, so it’s worth checking your board’s site too.

What’s below is whether a practice’s list actually grew between December 2025 and March 2026, the two most recent counts published. One that was signing people up then is a better bet than one whose list shrank. It’s not a promise though. You still have to phone, and some of that growth will be existing patients re-registering rather than new ones.

One more thing worth knowing: these are net figures. A practice that registered 300 people and lost 200 shows up the same as one that quietly took on 100. It also can’t tell you how many a practice is able to take at once, or whether they do it steadily or in bursts when a new dentist starts. This is a shorter list to phone, not a way of avoiding the phoning.

Where a practice grew but its postcode area didn’t, that’s flagged underneath. It usually means another practice nearby closed or lost a dentist and the patients were moved across, so the list grew without anyone new getting on.