(PR69) Factors Contributing to the Lack of Endodontic Care in Ohio Public Health and Medicaid Settings

Abstract:

Introduction: Access to Healthcare has been a challenge for years. With so many barriers to obtain general dental care, the barriers are to a greater extent when specialty care is necessary due to complexity, cost, and limited number of providers available to perform these procedures.

Objective: To investigate issues related to the limited access to endodontic care within Ohio’s Public Health and Medicaid settings. We hypothesized that Ohio’s Public Health and Medicaid setting facilities' limited access to endodontic care is associated with lack of adequate training, proper equipment and fear of insufficient reimbursement in these settings.

Methods: Survey was sent to 7336 email addresses obtained from Ohio dental board, only 275 dentists fulfilled inclusion criteria.

Results: Data was analyzed with Fisher’s exact test. 76.62% of the providers were general dentists, 51.64% of providers had not completed a residency program. >50% of the providers were willing to do RCT, but 28.73% reported their biggest challenge completing RCT was pretreatment assessments while 63.27% reported clinical treatment challenges. In a month, 40.29% reported they perform at least 6 or more EXTs due to level of difficulty of the RCT. 49.46% responded they are more confident performing EXTs vs RCTs. 64.03% and 84.48% reported they do not perform NSRETX nor SRETX procedures, respectively. All results were statistically significant.

Conclusion: There is an unmet need of Endodontic Care in Ohio’s public health and Medicaid settings, and the skill to perform Endodontic procedures is a significant factor in the access to care.