WE have written many times in recent years about the crisis facing the NHS.

Just last week, when York Hospital announced that it had run out of cash, we warned about the craziness of a system which imposed unrealistic budgets on hospital bosses, then penalised them when they failed to stick to them.

If there is one area of the NHS that really is in crisis, however, it is dentistry. Today, we reveal that some families in York are being forced to wait for more than two years to register with an NHS dentist.

How can this be? Imagine the outrage if anyone had to wait more than two years to register with a GP. So why is it happening with dentists?

Dentists are no less vital a part of the health service. They happen to specialise in the teeth and in spotting diseases of the mouth. But why should that mean you can’t get treatment on the NHS?

That really is the case for many families. Healthwatch York says some people in York are on a three year waiting list to see a dentist, while others have to travel outside the city to see one. Ten per cent of families have no-one registered with a dentist at all, while some people are avoiding getting treatment because they cannot afford private fees.

This is crazy. Yes, NHS funding is tight. But if children under five are going to hospital to have rotten teeth removed, something is clearly wrong. One of the benefits of going to a dentist regularly is that they can help prevent your teeth deteriorating to the point where they need expensive treatment. They can also spot conditions such as mouth cancer early.

Prevention is always, in the long run, cheaper than cure. So this isn’t really about funding at all. As with so many things in the NHS, it really comes down organisation - or rather the lack of it.

In the labyrinthine, baffling hierarchy of organisations responsible for ‘managing’ the NHS, there seems to be no-one who is able to take it by the scruff of the neck and say, doing things this way makes no sense.