The Legislative Route to Expanded Dental Care Access

BY ANDREW SMITH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ADSO

The consequences of this lack of access to care are much greater than cavities and root canals. In fact, a growing body of dental research has consistently demonstrated direct links between lacking oral health and serious conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Given the obvious importance of this issue, it is clear that we must look into the nature and cause of this dental professional shortage and pursue solutions that will help ensure patients get care where and when they need it.

Contributing factors

The current shortage of dental professionals is being felt across the country. It is a regular experience that patients attempting to book appointments for routine checkups or necessary procedures are told that the closest available date is weeks or even months away. This situation is not only frustrating, but leads to significantly worse dental health for patients who often delay or forgo needed dental work altogether, exacerbating existing problems and increasing the eventual cost of care.

Among the factors contributing to a lack of access to dental care across the United States are the burdensome regulations encountered by dental professionals who are looking to move and operate in a new state. States decide the rules for dental licensing virtually everywhere, meaning legislators are the ones who decide dental licensing requirements. Currently, the laws and licensing across the various states do not play nicely with each other.

This means that dentists and dental hygienists who wish to move to states where their services might be in more demand will almost certainly encounter significant financial burdens due to the cost and time it takes to obtain a new license in their intended place of residence. The undesirable result is that these professionals often decide to throw in the towel and not to move at all, leaving areas that desperately need injections of out of state dental talent continually understaffed.

Fortunately, legislators in many states are now aware of this problem and have begun introducing and pushing forward legislation that addresses the current suboptimal state of affairs. Under these newly proposed laws, such as those currently being considered in Florida and Texas, dentists and hygienists planning moves will see much greater flexibility in transferring their existing licenses to their new home states. States that pass such laws would have greater ability to acknowledge previous licenses in the state a professional is moving from and offer a much easier and expedited path to licensure.

This clearly would make the move to these states much more appealing for dental professionals considering a move, and in the end help ensure they are able to more easily relocate to where access to care is the lowest and their services are in the highest demand.

As an organization deeply embedded in the dental community, I know this is a topic the industry is passionate about. Patients should have the greatest possible access to quality care regardless of which state they live in. The ADSO not only hopes to see the passage of this commonsense legislation in the states where it is pending, but also to see more lawmakers prioritize the dental health of their constituents by introducing similar legislation in their own states.