Professor UCLA Health Policy and Management Los Angeles, California
Abstract:
Background: The California MediCal Dental Program is a health coverage designed to fill the need for critical dental care for low-income patients. By analyzing patterns of enrollment and payment in healthcare services, research can shed light to the dental care that low-income patients are receiving, and will further support programs that raise the standard of care for DentiCal patients. While the number of registered dental specialists rises from year to year, this does not necessarily indicate that the providers are localized where they are needed, and might reflect a sequestration of providers in urban locations, leaving more rural patients at risk.
Materials and
Methods: Correlate known datasets from the California Dental Association (includes licensure data, specialty, and location of practice), as well as Medi-Cal dental claims data from the California Department of Health Care Services (DHCS).
Results &
Discussion: There is an uneven distribution of dental specialists compared to the density of DentiCal patient visits in each county. Counties with a higher number of specialists tend to log less DentiCal visits; this suggests that DentiCal patients either have to drive out of their counties to seek specialty care and that specialists are sequestered outside of areas where heavy concentration of low-income populations reside. This study is limited in that this Medicare claims data only highlights the total number of claims that were filed with Medicare and does not actually represent the total number of patients in the county. This means that these visitations could have been accrued by a smaller number of people, further highlighting the limited reach of the DentiCal program to its intended audience. All in all, a greater emphasis must be placed in allowing care to be delivered and offered to a wider population.