Oral Health, U.S. 2002 Annual Report
Section 16: DENTAL CARE WORKFORCE/
COST OF DENTAL CARE/
ACCESSIBILITY OF DENTAL CARE
| 16.4 |
Percentage of the population residing in dental health professional shortage areas |
The Health Resources and Services Administration's (HRSA) Bureau of Primary Health Care (BPHC) designates and maintains a list of geographic areas with a shortage of dental, primary medical care and mental health practitioners. To be listed as a dental professional geographic shortage area the following criteria must be met:
- the area has to be a rational area for the delivery of dental services,
- either the area has to have a population to full-time equivalent dentist ratio of at least 5,000:1 or the area has to have a population to full-time equivalent dentist ratio of less than 5,000:1 but greater than 4,000:1 and have unusually high needs for dental services with insufficient capacity from existing dental providers, and
- dental professionals in contiguous areas have to be overutilized, excessively distant, or inaccessible to the population under consideration.
The list is reviewed annually, but emphasis is placed on updating those designations that are more than 3 years old or where significant changes relevant to the designation criteria have occurred.
SOURCE OF DATA
The analyses reported here are based on the Health Professional Shortage Area report (2001) for dental professionals from the Health Resources and Services Administration's Bureau of Primary Health Care.
- The states with the highest percentage of their population designated as being underserved by a dental professional were Wyoming (100%), Michigan (89%), Indiana (88%), Alabama (87%), Iowa (87%), Missouri (86%), Alaska (85%), Nevada (84%), Wisconsin (84%), Illinois (80%), and South Dakota (80%).
- The states with the lowest percentage of their population designated as being underserved by a dental professional were the District of Columbia (33%), West Virginia (45%), California (47%), and Oklahoma (49%).
Bullets reference data that can be found in Table 16.4.1.
REFERENCES
Health Resources and Services Administration. Selected statistics on health professional shortage areas. Rockville, MD: Bureau of Primary Health Care, 2001.
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