Are Dental Schools Part of the Safety Net?

This article examines the current safety net activities of dental schools and reviews strategies by which schools could care for more poor and low-income patients. The primary data come from the annual Survey of Dental Education, a joint American Dental Education Association (ADEA) and American Dental Association (ADA) activity. The analyses use descriptive statistics and are intended to give ballpark estimates of patients treated under varying clinical scenarios. Some 107.4 million people are underserved in comparison to utilization rates for middle-income Americans. In 2013-14, pre- and postdoctoral students treated about 1,176,000 disadvantaged patients. This is an estimate; the actual value may be 25% above or below this number. The impact of potential strategies for schools to provide more care to poor and low-income patients are discussed; these are larger class size, more community-based education, a required one-year residency program, and schools' becoming part of publicly funded safety net clinics. While dental schools cannot solve the access problem, they could have a major impact if the payment and delivery strategies discussed were implemented. This article was written as part of the project "Advancing Dental Education in the 21^st Century."