How we verify dentist availability

Three independent data sources, transparently documented.

1. The NHS website and the NHS Directory of Healthcare Services (daily)

Whether a practice takes new NHS patients comes from its own profile on the NHS website (nhs.uk): whether it currently accepts new NHS patients for routine dental care, for whom (adults, adults entitled to free dental care, children), and the date the practice last confirmed it. We read the profile of every NHS practice in England about once a day, slowly and one page at a time. Information from the NHS website, reused under the Open Government Licence.

The rest of each listing comes from the official NHS Directory of Healthcare Services API (version 3). For each surgery we capture:

  • Name, address, postcode, geo-coordinates
  • Phone, email, website
  • Accepting-new-patients flags for adults, children, urgent care, and referrals
  • Opening hours and facilities (wheelchair access, parking, etc.)
  • The "last updated" timestamp from NHS itself

NHS data is published by surgeries themselves via the NHS Profile Manager. We do not edit it.

2. Patient reports (live)

Anyone who has recently contacted a surgery can submit a report on its current availability. Reports include the date, patient type (adult or child), and an optional comment.

Once three independent reports agree on a status, the dentist's page is marked as "Verified by patients". A single report is shown but doesn't override the NHS data; three concurring reports do.

To prevent spam we hash visitor IPs (SHA-256) and use rate limiting per IP. We never publish the IP itself.

3. Manual verification (selective)

For the most-searched surgeries in each city we occasionally phone the practice to confirm status. Where we've done this, the report is tagged as "verified by phone".

What we don't do

  • We don't guess. If we don't know, the badge says "Status unknown".
  • We don't accept payment from surgeries to change their ranking.
  • We don't store personally identifying information about visitors beyond what's needed to prevent abuse.

Data freshness

Each practice's NHS website profile is read again about once a day. Patient reports are live. Each dentist page shows the date the practice itself last confirmed its NHS status, and when we last checked it.