Community Dental Practice at NHS Lothian
NHS Lothian currently has the longest community dental practice wait of the 8 boards with a usable figure, at 23 weeks.
Waits here have grown sharply over three years — up by around 9 weeks, more than half again.
73 people are on the list here and 8 were treated in the reporting month, so clearing the current queue alone would take about 9 months.
No Scottish provider publishes a price for community dental practice treatment, so only the NHS side of this comparison exists.
NHS Lothian covers Edinburgh, Livingston, Musselburgh, Dalkeith and Bathgate and the surrounding area.
Looking for an NHS dentist to register with, rather than hospital treatment? See every NHS dental practice in NHS Lothian — this page is about hospital treatment, which is a different thing.
Looking for a different board or specialty? Use the picker.
Waiting on the NHS
Community Dental Practice
NHS Lothian
How long people currently on the list have waited so far. Someone referred last week counts as a one-week wait, so this reads low too — just less so.
23 weeks
Median wait
Half have waited less than this so far — about 5 months.
59 weeks
90th percentile wait
1 in 10 have already waited longer than this — about a year.
Which way it’s going
Median wait has risen from 13 weeks to 22 weeks over the last 36 months.
This tracks the same measure you have selected above. PHS compute these medians from exact days while the headline figure is derived from wait bands, so the last point sits near but not exactly on it.
The size of the queue
73 people are waiting here, and 8 were treated in the reporting month. At that rate the existing queue alone takes about 9 months to clear.
That’s a floor, not a forecast — it assumes nobody else joins the list, and people join every day.
How does your own wait compare?
A median describes the middle. If you’ve been waiting a long time, it probably describes nothing like your experience.
This is the wait from being listed for treatment, not from seeing your GP. The outpatient wait to see the specialist comes first and no figure is published for it here.
Inpatient and day case figures for June 2026, based on 73 people on the list, published by Public Health Scotland. Derived from banded figures, so they are close estimates rather than exact. Your own wait depends on clinical urgency.
Paying privately
Community Dental Practice
£191–£275
A first private appointment
Across 4 Scottish providers. This is the consultant's fee for the appointment itself — not any tests, and not treatment.
No price collected for Community Dental Practice treatment itself. Every price here is read by hand from a hospital’s own published list, and no Scottish provider publishes one for this specialty that we’ve found.
The NHS figures beside this are real and complete. If you know of a provider publishing prices for this specialty, that’s genuinely useful to hear.
Median wait: 23 weeks.
Paying to find out, rather than paying to fix it
Some people pay privately for a consultation or a scan, then take the results back to the NHS. It costs hundreds rather than thousands, and what it buys is a diagnosis — not a place further up any queue.
Initial consultant appointment
4 providers: Spire Edinburgh Hospitals, Ross Hall Hospital, Albyn Hospital, Kings Park Hospital
£191–£275
Ultrasound scan
1 provider: Nuffield Health Edinburgh Hospital
On the NHS here: 3,788 people waiting, median 10 days, 10% over six weeks.
£330
MRI scan (one area)
2 providers: Nuffield Health Glasgow Hospital, Spire Edinburgh Hospitals
On the NHS here: 4,978 people waiting, median 28 days, 38% over six weeks.
£470–£625
CT scan (one area)
1 provider: Nuffield Health Glasgow Hospital
On the NHS here: 3,296 people waiting, median 18 days, 22% over six weeks.
£650
NHS diagnostic figures are for NHS Lothian as at 2026-03, and count people currently on the list rather than how long completed patients waited. That dataset is published a few months behind the treatment waits above.
A scan does not change your position on the NHS list by itself. What it can do is establish how urgent your case is, and urgency is what determines priority. Whether a private result is accepted, and what happens next, is a matter for your GP and your health board — ask them before spending anything. Scan prices usually exclude the consultant appointment needed to refer you and to interpret the result.