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Objectives Children in Medicaid/ CHIP public coverage programs who reside in rural counties have limited access to dental care services. Shortages of dental professionals in rural areas impede utilization of dental care. Public and private initiatives are attempting to address this crisis. Missourians instituted deregulatory policies and invested in community-based initiatives. Methods Using a Medicaid/ CHIP claims administrative dataset from 2004 to 2007, this research explored patterns of utilization to assess the impact of these efforts. Results The number of participating private dental office providers declined over the study period, and the number of children utilizing clinics increased. Trends are being observed within the public health dental care market demonstrating clinics are replacing private dentists as providers of Medicaid/ CHIP dental services. Conclusions Allowing greater market entry through deregulation could provide states with greater improvements to their public dental health infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to oral health services by the low-income population is limited. The purpose of this study is to measure the impact of Missouri state policy changes designed to improve oral health care access in Missouri from the oral health care providers perspective. Over the past 10 years, a number of policy changes have occurred in Missouri to improve access to MoHealthNet dental services. The analysis explored the effects of a decade of policy changes on perception for dental practitioners participating in Medicaid/CHIP fee-for-service and managed care, focusing on the flow of legislative statutory change and budget appropriations to publicly funded oral health care services for low-income children and families. Policy changes in Missouri that were designed to increase participation in the program may have had very little effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]