NMDA Journal Spring 2020

8 Dental Medicaid is broken. That shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone reading this report. That was one of the main planks of NMDA’s Oral Health Focus 2020 initiative seven years ago and remains just as true today, if not more so. The program takes the worst characteristics of commercial dental benefits plans and applies them to an underfunded program that discourages access and participation. So, NMDA welcomed the scrutiny this task force brings to this issue and agrees that it did pretty well identifying the root factors of Medicaid’s problems. Unfortunately, in an attempt to fill the pages with “facts” and findings, the report also includes plenty of misleading information which, unless cor- rected, could prevent decision-makers from reaching the best conclusions. Here are some suggested corrections and recommen- dations: Participation The report correctly reports the number of dentists with active licenses located in the state and then incorrectly states that the number is an estimate and that it cannot be verified, when the number comes from real data collected annually by the Health Care Workforce Task Force reflecting active prac- tice. It goes on to speculate that it can’t be known how many might be inactive or prac- ticing out-of-state, when in fact, there are more than 1,600 licensees of which 1,216 are actively practicing in the state. The report also reports the number of den- tists with Medicaid numbers as 1,073. Hav- ing a number is not really synonymous with participating, but this number does corre- spond with anecdotal reports that most dentists have at times seen Medicaid patients. The more important number is the 690 that are participating with one of the managed care organizations since they are required to maintain current credentialing. This also corroborates ADA Health Policy Institute data which several years ago indi- cated New Mexico has in excess of 60% of dentists participating in Medicaid, which is well above average. The number that have seen fee-for-service claims is accurate but WHAT TO TAKE ( AND NOT TAKE ) FROM THE MEDICAID TASK FORCE REPORT Tom Schripsema, DDS