Report looks at limited access to dental health, offers recommendations
A report this week from the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council looks at the consequences of inadequate access to oral health care and recommends ways to improve access.
Dentist chair at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where Debra Sperling, D.M.D., does cleanings, fillings, preventive care and applies fluoride sealants to prevent future damage.
The report is set for release on Wednesday but embargoed copies are available to reporters today, beginning at 11 a.m. EDT. The committee that wrote the report will discuss it at a briefing at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the National Press Club, which will be webcast (available at national-academies.org. Reporters can obtain copies of the report or register to attend the briefing by contacting the National Academies’ Office of News and Public Information at 202-334-2138 or news@nas.edu.
Just as with other aspects of health care, children, older adults, and people who live in rural areas are affected by economic, structural, geographic and cultural factors that limit access to dental health care.
Several entries in the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism have examined oral health care:
- 2010 entry: Out of reach: The rural health care gap, David Wahlberg, Wisconsin State Journal
- 2010 entry: State Lags in Dental Health Care for Children, Laurie A Udesky writing for The New York Times
- 2010 entry: Does the state have teeth to discipline dentists? by James T. Mulder, The (Syracuse, N.Y.) Post-Standard
- 2009 third-place entry: Kelley Weiss, of Capital Public Radio, looked at debt racked up on dental credit cards
- 2007 first-place winner: State of Decay: West Virginia’s Oral Health Crisis, by Eric Eyre, The Charleston (W.V.) Gazette [Tip sheet]
- 2008 entry: Carol Smith examined a dental death in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- 2005 first-place winner: “The Trouble with Teeth,” Emily Hanford and Deborah George, North Carolina Public Radio [Listen to MP3]
Watch for more resources on oral health on the AHCJ website.
Calif. dental care crisis could get worse
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Laurie Udesky, writing for The New York Times, has found that that pediatric dental care in the state has reached rock bottom, especially for children from low-income families. Unfortunately, in California, it’s starting to look like there may be a floor even lower than rock bottom. Udesky writes: “If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent proposed cuts remain — amounting to a $16.5 million reduction to Healthy Families and a $523 million reduction to Medi-Cal —more cases of untreated dental-related illnesses are likely.”
California children’s dental health was ranked third from the bottom in the National Survey of Children’s Health, above only Arizona and Texas. In the Bay Area, children and teenagers up to the age of 17 made nearly 1,980 visits to emergency rooms for preventable dental conditions in 2007. The cost of these visits averaged $172, but if a problem required hospitalization it cost an average of $5,000.
Today, experts interviewed said the dental care crisis had reached an even more alarming level. “We can only go up from here,” said Dr. Jared I. Fine, the dental health administrator at Alameda County Public Health Department. “We have an epidemic of dental disease in children that’s absurdly pervasive.”
For more on children’s dental health, check out The Cost of Delay (PDF), a report the Pew Center on the States released earlier this year. It seeks to answer the questions “What can states do to ensure better dental care?” and “How many states are doing those things right now?” and includes a strong body of statistics and analysis within its 74 pages.
The National Survey of Children’s Health, last fully updated in 2007, is still a comprehensive source for national data on pediatric dental health. There are data fields for overall dental health, as well as for specific oral health issues in children. For an overview of the data, I just pulled the overall health numbers and mapped a subset of them.
Wisconsin’s low Medicaid fees create dental woes
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
The Wisconsin State Journal’s David Wahlberg reports that access to adequate dental care is a major public health issue throughout the state, especially among Medicaid recipients. Federally funded clinics are starting to fill the gaps, but there is still quite a bit of catching up to do. Waiting lists are long, and it’s the nature of remedial dental care that getting each mouth back on track is a long and involved process.
Photo by dbgg1979 via FlickrDentists told Wahlberg that they are reluctant to serve Medicaid recipients because the state’s reimbursement rates are too low. According to HHS, Wahlberg writes, “Just 23 percent of the state’s enrollees got dental care in 2008. Only Delaware, Florida and Kentucky fared worse.”
Rural areas have only about half as many dentists per person as urban areas do, making the search for dental care even harder in small towns.
That, combined with low fluoride levels in many rural drinking water supplies, means more tooth loss and untreated decay for many rural residents, state health officials say.
“Of all of the holes (in health care), dental care is the biggest and the deepest,” said Greg Nycz, executive director of the Family Health Center of Marshfield, which serves much of rural, northern Wisconsin.
The article is the latest in Wahlberg’s yearlong look at rural health care. Wahlberg will be moderating a panel about oral health for rural residents at next week’s Rural Health Journalism Workshop in Kansas City.
Dental health care disparities overlooked
Filed under: Hot Health Headline, Pharmaceuticals
Guy Boulton of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigates the “lack of access to dental care for children and adults on limited incomes,” calling it “one of the most entrenched, widespread and overlooked problems of the U.S. health care system.”
Eric Eyre, who did award-winning coverage of West Virginia’s dental health problem, shares his insights and reporting methods, as well as starting points and key sources. Eyre’s article includes a link to a questionnaire about how the story was reported, a dentist’s presentation on the “Status of Oral and Visual Health in Rural America” from AHCJ’s 2008 Rural Health Journalism Workshop and an MP3 of the discussion at that workshop.
In Wisconsin, Boulton reports, the state Medicaid program for low-income families pays less than private insurers and is thus accepted by few dentists around the state. Boulton takes an in-depth look at the deficiencies of the state program and of HMOs and finds that the state’s not yet doing enough to address the problem.
Among the things Bouton discovered: “The results can be seen in young adults: 42% of all new military recruits cannot be deployed until they receive dental care.”
-
Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
