Dental services under Medicaid: the experience of Erie County, New York.

Trends and Patterns of Dental Care in an Urban Area before Medicaid

“…One of the generalizations considered possible in reports of the early impact of Medicaid on the use of services in Erie County, N.Y., was that the program "did not reach the majority of its eligibles, although the fi-nancial impediment to care had been removed for two years" (14). Analyses of fiscal records showed that people on welfare obtained disproportionately less care than those who were merely medically indigent.…”

“…Furthermore, in the Erie County studies dealing with the early impact of Medicaid on private dental practice, 66 percent of surveyed dentists indicated that the majority of their Medicaid patients were persons they had treated previously, and .only 34 percent indicated that the majority were new patients (17).…”

“…In New York State, for instance, the administration of Medicaid is decentralized into the 64 welfare districts of the State (14). Therefore, basic benchmarks of dental care patterns should become available also within local communities.…”

“…Most of the publicly funded, recently launched, and currently planned dental care programs-including Medicaid in New York-aim exclusively at, or .give preference to, children (17,(20)(21)(22). Rates of dental care use over a 5-year interval are considered for various age, income, and ethnoreligious subgroups, and the patterns at two points of time, the years 1960 and 1965, are noted.…”

“…Such considerations are relevant because, under the new systems for delivering comprehensive care, dental services are planned and delivered together with other health services. Yet some evidence and its interpretation suggest that seeking and providing dental care have their own dynamics, that dental and medical action may occupy two quite different areas in society's orientation, and therefore that dental services should not be lumped with other medical services (17).…”