Impact of South Carolina's Medicaid fluoride varnish reimbursement policy on children's receipt of fluoride varnish in medical and dental settings.

OBJECTIVE

We estimated the effect of South Carolina's (SC) Medicaid fluoride varnish (FV) reimbursement policy on children's receipt of fluoride varnish in medical (MFV) and dental (DFV) settings.

METHODS

We obtained data from SC Medicaid enrollment and claims files for children ≤ 47 months of age across State Fiscal Years (SFY) 2008-2013 and created a panel dataset of 52,841 children representing 126,464 child-years of observation. Pooled multivariate logistic regression models were estimated to identify factors associated with a higher likelihood of a child receiving one or more MFV or DFV treatments.

RESULTS

The FV rates per child-year were 1 percent for physicians and 23 percent for dentists, respectively. The child-year rate for receipt of FV from both a physician and a dentist was less than one-third of one percent.

CONCLUSIONS

A policy designed to increase access to FV treatments from physicians and dentists for children up to forty-seven months of age was not successful for physicians; however, the positive findings for dentists were promising.