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County Commissioners Want Better Dental Care For Kids

UPDATED 01/31/11 12:48 p.m.

CHICAGO (WBBM/CBS) -- Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is trying to find ways to balance the county's budget, but a group of commissioners and dental experts on Monday will push to expand spending on dental care for children.

As WBBM Newsradio 780's Bernie Tafoya reports, dental health care experts and a couple of county commissioners say it would pay off in the long run for the county to spend money on better dental care for children, because a new study has found a connection between inadequate oral health care and other medical issues in the rest of the body.

Poor oral health has been linked to heart disease, premature birth and diabetes.

LISTEN: Newsradio 780's Bernie Tafoya reports

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"We don't have enough dental health care clinics, and accessibility to those clinics is limited because of the wait, and people lose interest, or just don't follow through on it," said Commissioner Peter Silvestri (R-9th).

In fat, the county Department of Public Health has just four suburban dental clinics, half as many as it operated in 2005.

As a result, the number of patients seen at these clinics has dropped sharply, and wait times for appointments range from three months for routine care to as long as a year for specialty care, according to an audit released Monday, which had been commissioned by members of the Cook County Board.

In addition, the report found that visits to county dental clinics were suspended entirely for several months as the county dealt with the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak.

"Right now, [Cook County] is in a crisis state," said Dr. Cheryl Watson-Lowry, of the Chicago Dental Society.
Access to dental care in Chicago is especially scarce, she said.

Since the Chicago Department of Public Health closed the last of its dental clinics, the University of Illinois at Chicago's College of Dentistry and Stroger Hospital are among the few remaining places city residents can go for low-cost dental care.

Community health centers do what they can to fill the gap, but there are too few, Watson-Lowry said.

Private dentists, meanwhile, are reluctant to accept Medicaid patients because the state's low reimbursement rates barely cover the cost of care, said Dr. Greg Johnson, executive director of the Illinois State Dental Society.

Johnson said the crisis will continue without higher Medicaid reimbursement rates, more publicly-funded dental clinics and better incentives for dentists to practice in underserved areas.

Silvestri says he does not have an idea how much more money would need to be spent to provide proper oral health care to poor children.

The Chicago Sun-Times contributed to this report, via the Sun-Times Media Wire

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