Living with a disability can be challenging in the best of circumstances. However, when it comes to accessing quality dental care when you have a disability, the obstacles can feel insurmountable. From the lack of training, resources, and equipment needed to care for patients with disabilities to the stigmatization of the disabled to the lack of funding for dental care for the disabled, patients in need are often left to suffer.
Lack of Training and Accessibility
One of the most significant challenges that persons with disabilities face when trying to find quality dental care is simply that dentists are often not trained or equipped to serve special needs patients. For example, mobility issues may make it difficult or even impossible for patients to sit in the dental chair or for dentists and hygienists to be able to access and care for patients’ teeth and gums appropriately.
In addition to the lack of necessary tools and equipment needed to serve patients with disabilities, dentists and hygienists often lack the training to understand and address the unique needs of their patients with disabilities. For instance, millions of Americans have been identified as neurodiverse, but such diagnoses are rarely understood, let alone incorporated effectively into the training dental health practitioners receive.
Neurodiversity encompasses an array of conditions, including patients on the autism spectrum and those with sensory processing disorders. For dental patients with conditions such as these, the experience of going to the dentist can be both terrifying and traumatizing, particularly if clinicians do not understand or are not prepared to meet the patient’s needs. Far too often, the dentist may prefer to turn the patient away rather than invest the time and expense needed to provide the specialized care that patients with sensory disorders need.
The Costs of Care
Another significant challenge that dental patients with disabilities face is the cost of care. In the US, patients with disabilities are often covered by Medicaid. Unfortunately, however, Medicaid typically pays out only a small percentage of the actual costs of care. For this reason, many dentists refuse to accept patients covered by Medicaid.
And this means that patients with disabilities may find themselves traveling for hours to access care. The situation in lower and middle-income countries is not much better in this regard. Indeed, even in developed countries, the high costs of healthcare, including not only dental care but also medical and pharmaceutical costs, have shut persons with special needs out of the healthcare system entirely.
Even in high-income nations with so-called “universal” healthcare, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, dental care coverage is haphazard, often deemed a lower priority than other forms of medical care. And that means that even in the most progressive nations on earth, patients with disabilities still often face significant financial barriers to care.
What Is to Be Done?
There are no easy solutions to the problem of accessing quality dental care for persons with disabilities. On an individual level, a patient with a developmental delay or a sensory processing disorder may benefit from advanced preparation before a dental appointment.
For example, if the patient can meet ahead of time with the staff and clinicians at the dentist’s office, then they may be less likely to become overstimulated, anxious, or fearful during the actual treatment. This is particularly true if the patient can see, touch, and hear the equipment before the appointment.
An advanced consultation can also help clinicians plan to meet the patient’s particular needs. However, as important as such personalized care maybe, this, alone, will not be sufficient. There must also be structural change to the healthcare system, one devoted to making dental healthcare accessible to all regardless of their disability. Destigmatization, improved dental care funding, and specialized training for the care of dental patients with disabilities must lie at the heart of this change.
The Takeaway
Persons with disabilities face challenges every day, but finding quality dental care should not be one of them. From dentists’ lack of proper training and equipment to the prevalence of stigmas regarding disability to inadequate funding for dental care, the healthcare system simply is not designed to provide patients with disabilities with the access to care that they need and deserve. This can be changed, however, with a concerted effort to better integrate patients with disabilities into the oral healthcare system, including ensuring that clinicians are trained and equipped to serve special needs patients and that government healthcare funding provides just compensation for such specialized care.