Dentists: Reduced Medicaid payments threatening practices
Medicaid ยป Budget error must be fixed, they say.
By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune
The toll on children
On Wednesday, Horgesheimer said, he saw several children under the age of four who had more than 10 cavities. Not old enough, or cooperative enough, to be treated in a chair, they'll have to be sedated in an operating room, where he'll perform their extractions, fillings, root canals or crowns.
One lethargic 7-year-old girl on Medicaid showed up at his office that same day with a gnawing pain and fever. A serious tooth infection had spread to her cheek and was starting to cause her eyelid to close.
"Had I not taken out that tooth today," the dentist said, "she would have been up at the hospital seeking treatment from the ER."
Horgesheimer wishes this child were a rarity. She's not.
An attending dentist at Primary Children's Medical Center, Horgesheimer said 20 to 30 children come in every week with serious, yet preventable, dental infections. What could have been avoided with good oral hygiene, routine check-ups and timely care is instead treated with intravenous antibiotics at many times more the cost.
Most of these children are in low-income families and on Medicaid, which this year has seen its enrollment swell to an all-time high. Strapped for cash, it has dropped dental coverage for aged, blind and disabled Utahns for fiscal 2010, leaving an estimated 40,000 people to rely on already overburdened nonprofit organizations and safety net clinics for care.
Those who are left -- pregnant women and children -- have struggled to get appointments. Even before dentists' pay was gouged in May, only one in 11 Utah dentists were taking new Medicaid patients, Christensen said.
Trace Lund, a pediatric dentist who has practiced in Provo and Price for the past decade, sees children from 12 counties who can't get appointments closer to home.
"Many of these people drive considerable lengths to find us because we can help their children," he wrote in a letter to legislators. "That is a humbling notion that people will drive four hours to get to someone who can take care of a hurting child."
Salt Lake City (Utah) is fluoridated:NYSCOF
By Lisa Rosetta
The Salt Lake Tribune
The toll on children
On Wednesday, Horgesheimer said, he saw several children under the age of four who had more than 10 cavities. Not old enough, or cooperative enough, to be treated in a chair, they'll have to be sedated in an operating room, where he'll perform their extractions, fillings, root canals or crowns.
One lethargic 7-year-old girl on Medicaid showed up at his office that same day with a gnawing pain and fever. A serious tooth infection had spread to her cheek and was starting to cause her eyelid to close.
"Had I not taken out that tooth today," the dentist said, "she would have been up at the hospital seeking treatment from the ER."
Horgesheimer wishes this child were a rarity. She's not.
An attending dentist at Primary Children's Medical Center, Horgesheimer said 20 to 30 children come in every week with serious, yet preventable, dental infections. What could have been avoided with good oral hygiene, routine check-ups and timely care is instead treated with intravenous antibiotics at many times more the cost.
Most of these children are in low-income families and on Medicaid, which this year has seen its enrollment swell to an all-time high. Strapped for cash, it has dropped dental coverage for aged, blind and disabled Utahns for fiscal 2010, leaving an estimated 40,000 people to rely on already overburdened nonprofit organizations and safety net clinics for care.
Those who are left -- pregnant women and children -- have struggled to get appointments. Even before dentists' pay was gouged in May, only one in 11 Utah dentists were taking new Medicaid patients, Christensen said.
Trace Lund, a pediatric dentist who has practiced in Provo and Price for the past decade, sees children from 12 counties who can't get appointments closer to home.
"Many of these people drive considerable lengths to find us because we can help their children," he wrote in a letter to legislators. "That is a humbling notion that people will drive four hours to get to someone who can take care of a hurting child."
Salt Lake City (Utah) is fluoridated:NYSCOF
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