ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, April 3, 1997 TAG: 9704030045
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-12 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: First of two editorials
Children's snaggle-toothed grins may look cute - but they can also reflect a serious gap in preventive dental care, especially among kids from low-income families.
THE TOOTHBRUSH is a less familiar object in the lives of many low-income children than the TV set. And hundreds of Virginia's low-income children, never admonished by parents to brush their teeth or instructed in this simple practice, are also never seen by a dentist who might fill in this gap in their early-childhood education.
Nor are they treated by dentists for conditions such as nursing-bottle decay, which can result when babies are put to bed with bottles in their mouths long past the time when they should be weaned. As a result, they grow up with a mouthful of problems, including painful toothaches that can lead to extractions of their permanent teeth before they've even figured out there is no tooth fairy.
To be sure, many parents, lacking parenting skills and even basic understanding of the importance of dental hygiene, may be partly to blame for their kids' snaggle-toothed smiles. But a key reason many poor youngsters never receive preventive dental care is the state's rate of Medicaid reimbursement for dentists.
The reimbursement is so low, dentists say, that they lose money by treating Medicaid kids, so most dentists, however altruistic they might be, refuse to accept them as patients. The result is a shortage of dentists for these children is so acute that officials of Head Start and programs like Roanoke's Child Health Investment Partnership (CHIP) rightly call it a health-care crisis.
CHIP, which serves about 1,030 low-income children in Roanoke city, Salem and the counties of Roanoke, Botetourt and Craig, estimates that 620 of them have serious dental problems. These youngsters are either on Medicaid or are kids of working-poor parents whose medical needs are paid for by CHIP at Medicaid-reimbursement rates. Only a handful of private dentists and two public-health dentists are available in this area to see these children. In emergencies, CHIP has had to transport kids to other regions to find dentists for them.
Statewide, there are 3,800 licensed dentists - 1,600 of whom have signed up as Medicaid providers. But only about 700 dentists actually see Medicaid patients. For the 328,000 kids eligible for Medicaid-covered dental care, this means that only one in five will receive the care. The rest are left at risk of possible gum diseases, speech impediments and other miseries that can stem from rotten teeth.
LENGTH: Medium: 53 linesby CNB