Access to dental care for Medicaid members in Massachusetts, as well as across the nation, has been consistently declining over the last decade. The reasons are numerous and complex: (1) the supply of dentists graduating has been declining as older dentists retire; (2) dentistry is in demand in good economic times; practices are busy with well paying patients; (3) fees paid by Medicaid are much below the private sector and in Massachusetts are less than 50% of customary fees; (4) dentists wanting to participate in Medicaid cannot limit the number of Medicaid patients they serve; (5) Medicaid administrative practices have not kept up with the field and are burdensome for the dental practices. For all of these reasons, the number of dentists participating in Medicaid in Massachusetts is less than 20% of the practicing dentists in the state.
Medicaid has been working for over two years to reform its dental program working with both the Medicaid advocate community and the state's dental society. Most of the changes it proposes require legislative action or major administrative overhauls. As the state continues to struggle with its reform program, it has developed creative avenues to provide dental services to Medicaid patients. These include:
1 – Establishment of capitalization grants to support non-profit agencies, particularly community health centers, to develop or expand existing services to Medicaid members. 2 – Development of a pediatric/family medicine physician curriculum to educate doctors on the prevention, detection and patient education of oral disease in order to reduce its incidence and prevalence.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant in this session will: 1) Recognize the complexities of dental policy, particularly, its difference from medical policy 2) Understand the importance of dental care for the Medicaid population 3) Be aware of specific avenues that state Medicaid agencies can take to improve dental care access for significantly less dollars than major reform efforts will cost
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.