Bridging the Gap in Affordability of Dental Services
Nowadays, the gap between the poor, healthcare-deficient populace and the affluent, who can afford proper, regular dental care, has significantly increased. The growth of inflation has led to a rise in the costs of dental services, significantly reducing the number of people who can afford proper treatment. Left without treatment, dental diseases can greatly worsen the quality of human life and lead to serious consequences, such as disorders of the functioning of the gastrointestinal tract, cardiovascular system, and others. To make dental care affordable, governmental and state financing of dental services should be further enhanced.
Many people argue that the governmental program of Medicaid covers dental care expenses, but today it is still a state option, and not all states are ready to embrace it. Moreover, the program does not cover many oral diseases beyond emergency dental care. While recent studies show that “dental insurance through Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is associated with improved oral health outcomes,” this option is often not a priority for poorer states that already have high expenses (Elani, Kawachi & Sommers, 2021, para 2). Co-financing dental care at the national level or providing benefits for the states that adopted a coverage of dental care expenses would positively impact the affordability of dental care for low-income families.
Another stumbling block to proper and regular dental care for everyone is the absence of dental benefits coverage in Medicaid programs. Covering only emergency treatment leads to many dental services being left out of this system, and only the affluent population can afford them. Under basic dental care coverage, treatments for periodontitis, periostitis, diseases of the tissues surrounding the tooth, and violations of the position and growth of teeth are not financed and thus become unaffordable for low-income adults. The solution to this problem would be the progressive inclusion of dental benefits into Medicaid dental care options adopted by the states.
Computer Technology in the Dentist’sDentist’s Office
Digital technologies can be used in all branches of dentistry and at all stages of treatment. There are systems for clinical, administrative, and special-purpose usage. Systems for administrative applications are used for maintaining various forms of medical documentation. In these programs, in addition to automated work with documents, there may be a function of modeling a specific clinical situation and a proposed patient treatment plan. Computer information processing allows dentists to quickly and thoroughly examine the patient and show his results, if necessary, to other specialists.
In clinical usage, digital technologies are considered a sufficiently reasoned approach to the treatment of dental patients. Dentists use specialized software to visualize three-dimensional computed tomography results for determining bone architecture, the size of individual sections of teeth and jaws, the positions of blood vessels and nerves, and diagnostics of tumors and neoplasms (Roshani et al., 2019).
Special-purpose usage includes 3D implantation and prosthetics that allow patients to have artificial teeth instead of missing ones. A 3D implantation is an approach that implies the use of 3D technologies at all stages of the process, from diagnostics to the installation of artificial teeth. The whole complex allows dentists to suggest several patient solutions, among which the best could be chosen.
A Critical Analysis of Teledentistry
In 2014, the State of California signed into law the use of Medicaid to pay for teledentistry. This pioneering law paved the way for the whole range of teleconsultations and treatments that people use nowadays. Telemedicine services already offered in the US by companies such as Teledenists and MouthWatch facilitate access to dental services. These services are significantly cheaper for patients; they offer more affordable prevention methods and allow patients to consult with otherwise unavailable medical professionals. For example, the Talent service of MouthWatch offers an all-in-one telestomatology platform that allows patients to take photos of their mouth or teeth, remotely send relevant information to the dentist and conduct consultations in real time.
Candid, a company offering patients dental aligners and appropriate treatment plans, has tested in practice a technology called Dental Monitoring, which provides for the transfer of a ScanBox device connected to the Network to patients. The device looks like a virtual reality headset. It looks into their mouths and controls the process of using levelers. ScanBox connects to the patient’spatient’s smartphone, captures images, and sends them to a remote orthodontist. The uploaded photos are also scanned using an artificial intelligence algorithm to track the patient’spatient’s progress, assess oral hygiene, and identify potential health problems such as visible caries or gum recession (Ghai, 2020). The orthodontist examines each patient’spatient’s case, determines whether they are eligible for treatment, and draws up a treatment plan. The aligners are then mailed to patients who, as a rule, must be at least 16 years old and who have mild or moderate alignment problems.
Since the importance of remote assistance has increased during the pandemic, telemedicine is also gaining momentum, and the authorities are responding accordingly. Medicare Centers developed a Medicaid & CHIP Telehealth Toolkit that allows extended dentist care coverage in the telemedicine field and states technological requirements for clinics to use the system. Moreover, the patient population who can use the system for free is constantly enlarged to include less protected citizens.
References
Elani, H. W., Kawachi, I., & Sommers, B. D. (2021). Dental Outcomes After Medicaid Insurance Coverage Expansion Under the Affordable Care Act. JAMA network open, 4(9), e2124144-e2124144.
Ghai, S. (2020). Teledentistry during COVID-19 pandemic. Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, 14(5), 933-935.
Roshani, A. A., Tartifi, E., Jamshidi, M., Sheykholeslami, F., & Hadianfard, A. M. (2019). An Investigation of Using Information Technology in Dental Offices: A Cross-Sectional Study. Jundishapur Scientific Medical Journal, 17(5), 491-501.