The introduction of the Dental Access Portal (DAP) and conditions within the Variation offer for 2025–2026 have resulted in some further changes which need to be modified on Compass to ensure reporting needs support the variation offer.
NHS Dental Services have created 3 new indicators to support these changes and an e-form to allow practices to submit empty appointments for new urgent patients. The following guidance is intended to provide clarity on when they should be used or selected on a treatment form.
Welsh DAP New Patient: 9185
Patients who have registered on DAP will be allocated by Health Boards to dental practices. If you receive a new patient from your Health Board you will be required to select the 'Welsh DAP New Patient' indicator and submit your treatment form in line with current guidelines for your patient. This will provide visibility to your Health Boards of the volume of DAP appointments receiving treatment. If a patient remains at the practice for continuing care, you will only be required to select the Welsh DAP New Patient indicator on the first course of treatment when you first received the patient from the Health Board.
Welsh New Urgent Patient Referral: 9186
Patients who require urgent care will contact Health Boards or NHS 111 requesting an appointment for urgent care. Where certain criteria are met and an urgent appointment is needed the Health Board will allocate patients directly to dental practices.
If you receive a patient from your Health Board for an urgent appointment you will be required to select the 'New Urgent Patient Referral' indicator and submit your treatment form in line with current guidelines for your patient. This indicator will provide visibility to your Health Boards of the volume of urgent appointments carried out in their region.
Patient Did Not Attend (DNA): 9187
If you receive a patient from your Health Board for an urgent appointment and the patient subsequently does not attend the initial appointment you will be required to select the 'New Urgent Patient Referral' indicator and the 'Patient Did Not Attend (DNA)'.
This will provide the Health Boards with visibility of how many urgent appointment patients are not attending the initial appointment and will allow them to manage the financial values against the metrics correctly in future.
Empty Appointment Slots
There may be some cases where urgent appointment times have been kept available and a Health Board is unable to provide a patient for these dates and times to the dental practice. If this happens the dental practice business owner or clinician who was available for the empty appointment will be required to capture this information via Compass directly.
We have created an e-form which will allow the user to record the time, date, treatment location, clinician ID and contract number. This data will be reported to Health Boards and dental contracts to provide visibility of empty appointment slots. We have also created an enquiry table to allow you to have visibility of appointments that have been submitted against your contract number or clinician ID.
The following guidance will provide instructions for how you submit your empty appointment data.
Wales Government E-form Guidance – Empty Appointment Slots
Empty Appointment (Wales) Submissions
Accessing the Empty Appointment Wales Entry Form
- Log into Compass.
- In the left-hand Homepage Menu, scroll down to the bottom of the list and select Empty Appointments (Wales):
- Select the Welsh Empty Appointments Entry option.
Note that:
- all fields on the form are now mandatory
- any fields indicated with an asterisk (*) will require overwriting to make an entry
From here:
- Select the relevant information from the drop-down list available.
- If a Contract ID is not available, please ensure you are attached to the contract as, if not, this will have to be done first by your Health Board and Shared Services Wales before you can make an entry.
- Next to Date of Appointment, enter the box with the calendar icon and select a date when the empty appointment occurred.
- Next to Time of Empty Appointment, enter the box and type in the empty appointment time e.g. 09:30.
- Once you have filled in the above information, select the Next button in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.
- Check the details are correct on the Summary page.
- If the details are incorrect, select the Back button to make necessary changes.
- If you do not want to save an entry, select either Cancel Form or Exit Form. This will not submit your empty appointment data but will make a record in your Enquiry screen. Repeat the above steps if the time and date of the appointment needs to be recorded.
- If the details are correct, select Submit Form. There is not a requirement to add a note when submitting the form.
- On the next screen select the OK button.
- This will take you back to the Providers Homepage screen.
Empty Appointment Wales – Viewing your Submission
The new E-form screen allows Business Owner, Business Practice Administrator, Practice Manager, DCP and Clinician users to view the submitted empty appointment details. The following guidance will provide instructions for how you view your empty appointment data.
Accessing the Empty Appointment Wales Enquiry Table
- Log into Compass.
- In the left-hand Homepage Menu, scroll down to the bottom of the list and select Empty Appointments (Wales):
- Select the Welsh Empty Appointments Enquiry option.
- If you are logged in as a Business Owner, select the Provider ID for the appointments you wish to view and select the Search button.
- If you are logged in as a Clinician, select the Contract Number for the appointments you wish to view and select the Search button.
From here:
- All empty appointment submissions will be displayed in this table.
- Only submissions with the status marked as Completed are counted as a valid submission.
- You can download the report by selecting the download image located in the top right of the Compass table