Guest Author
Overwhelming evidence suggests that dental workforce reform to improve access in Florida is needed — and long overdue.
In fact, 65 of Florida’s 67 counties have documented dental health professional shortage areas, meaning nearly every county — in part or in whole — lacks enough dental professionals to serve its residents’ oral health needs.
More than 7.1 million Floridians, about one in three, now live in these areas with limited access to basic dental care, more than any other state and a sharp increase from five years ago.
Furthermore, Florida’s poorer, largely rural populations are more likely to be at risk due to access challenges. Policymakers can profoundly improve access by authorizing dental therapists to provide essential dental care services across the state.
Dental therapists are not new. As a matter of fact, they have been providing dental care for 100 years in more than 50 countries, in both public and private settings. They have been utilized for about 20 years in the U.S., where currently, fifteen states have authorized dental therapists to practice. Most published studies have found dental therapists expand access to safe, high-quality care.
Dental therapists would work under the supervision of Florida-licensed dentists to provide basic dental care that many Floridians can’t get today: exams, fillings, and simple extractions. They graduate from an American Dental Association (ADA) Commission on Dental Accreditation educational program and complete the exact same licensing exam as dentists for the procedures they perform.
The urgency for reform is reflected in hundreds of research papers and countless anecdotal personal stories proving that regular dental care improves overall health and quality of life.
For example, good dental health lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease, respiratory infections, diabetes, and birth complications, among many other harmful conditions. The ripple effect of poor oral health extends far beyond the health care system to impact workforce productivity, education, and economic disparities.
The single most impactful way legislators can improve access to dental care in Florida is to allow the market to determine the number and types of providers. Yet maximizing access requires ensuring Florida has enough dental providers and that the right types are well-distributed across the state.
Despite positive results associated with dental therapy, the primary opposition continues to be organized dentistry (namely the ADA), which lobbies with state partners to protect against unwanted competition. However, the fact remains the data just does not support the dentists’ expressed fears about patient safety.
Although dental therapists are not a silver bullet to end Florida’s oral health issues, they are a key part of the solution.
As has been the case with other areas of medicine expanding scope and access, such as with physician assistants, such a policy innovation would increase the number of qualified providers, improve the capacity of dentists currently practicing in the state, and encourage the development of new highly skilled health care workers.
On the patient side, more Floridians would have access to quality dental care, adults and children from poorer and rural communities would be far likelier to seek care before worse health challenges arise, and Florida could again serve as a model for other states seeking practical, market-based health policy reforms.
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Doug Wheeler is the Director of the George Gibbs Center for Economic Prosperity at The James Madison Institute (JMI), a free-market public policy research organization based in Florida.
