How Phantom Networks, Provider Qualities, and Poverty Sway Medicaid Dental Care Access: A Geospatial Analysis of Manhattan.

ABSTRACT: Access to general dental care is essential for preventing and treating oral diseases. To ensure adequate spatial accessibility for the most vulnerable populations, New York State mandates a ratio of one general dentist to 2000 Medicaid recipients within 30 min of public transportation. This study employed geospatial methods to determine whether the requirement is met in Manhattan by verifying the online directories of ten New York managed care organizations (MCOs), which collectively presented 868 available dentists from 259 facilities. Our survey of 118 dental facilities representing 509 dentists revealed that significantly fewer dentists are available to treat Medicaid recipients compared to MCO directories. The average dentist-to-patient ratio derived from the MCO listings by the Two-St

SUBMITTER: Kelley D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8656799 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature