CDA Essentials 2019 • Volume 6 • Issue 7

12 | 2019 | Issue 7 CDA at W ork No health care system can achieve 100% annual population consultation rates for any service, if that is indeed the goal. There will always be people who will not visit a dentist or a physician in a given year. Cost is one important factor. Some people are afraid. Others don’t feel it’s important enough. Yet others find it too much of a commute or an inconvenience, even if services are free. Access through a universal public health system has its own pitfalls; the 2018 CCHS shows that 15.3% of Canadians aged 12 and over (roughly 4.7 million people) don’t have a regular health care provider or family doctor. Three out of four people visiting a dental health professional annually seems to be an upper limit for utilization in many countries. Germany and Denmark, considered dental care systems to emulate in terms of their usage rates, serve about 80% of their population each year. 2 If these latest Canadian numbers included children under 12 years of age in the overall count, Canada may inch closer to an 80% rate. Canada is a leader among OECD countries in dental care utilization, even amongst those that have more publicly funded dental health care, as these statistics demonstrate: • Australia: 47% visited a dentist or dental professional within the last year (2015). 3 • US: 35.4% of adults (age 19-64) visited a GP dentist within the last year (2015) 4 and 66.2% of dentate adults (age 30 and over) visited a dentist within the last year (2011-2014). 5 • UK: 51% of adults visited a dentist in the NHS within the last two years (2017). 6 • France: 63.7% of people between 15 and 75 visited a dentist within the last year (2014). 7 The Canadian mixed private-public dental health care system that has been built over many decades is working very well. There is opportunity and an ethical obligation to improve access for underserved vulnerable groups, which is an ongoing goal for both government and dental health professionals. But an attempt to transform the dental health care system into a fully public universal system may have negative consequences for millions of Canadians who are currently well-served. Further analysis on this data is needed to understand differences and trends in annual dental care use by various population segments. a Statistics Canada Health Fact Sheets: Dental Care, 2018 available at: www150. statcan.gc.ca/n1/ pub/82-625-x/ 2019001/article/ 00010-eng.htm From a health systems perspective, this data demonstrates that our oral health system provides high levels of dental care use for a large population base at a relatively low cost to government. Sources 1.Data from2014 fromunpublishedcustomtables fromStatisticsCanada. 2.Data fromEurostat,aDirectorate-GeneraloftheEuropeanCommission. 3.Data fromthe2014–15NationalHealthSurveybytheAustralian InstituteofHealthandWellness. 4.Data fromtheMedicalExpenditurePanelSurvey(MEPS)bytheUSDepartmentofHealthandHumanServices. 5.Data fromNationalHealthandNutritionExaminationSurvey(NHANES)2011-2014. 6.Data fromNHSDigital,GovernmentStatisticalService. 7. Data fromBaromètresanté2014,L’Institutnationaldepréventionetd’éducationpour lasanté(INPES).