A parliamentary inquiry investigating health outcomes in regional and rural New South Wales heard there is a shortage of dentists outside metropolitan areas, where more than one third of those on the dental waiting list are located.
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During a hearing earlier this month, president of the Australian Dental Association's (ADA) NSW branch Michael Jonas said that of the 85,000 adults on the dental waiting list across the state, roughly 30,000 live in regional, remote or rural areas.
Dr Jonas suggested that a "more equitable and collaborative" approach to providing dental vouchers could help reduce waiting lists in the regions.
"Just getting people to use the child dental benefit schedule will make a huge effect," he said.
"The uptake is 37 per cent. It is just silly."
When asked how he feels seeing children coming to the dentist with rotten teeth, Dr Jonas used an example from Wagga where a colleague provided general anesthetic to a child eight or nine years' old, who had eight teeth removed.
"This young person had about 60 per cent or 70 per cent of [their] remaining teeth removed," he said.
"They were deciduous baby teeth, but being that as it may it is quite often a preventable situation.
"It is very traumatic and very painful."
ADA NSW advisory and engagement executive Sarah Raphael said there is "absolutely" enough dentists across the state to staff areas of need, with the issue being "maldistribution" rather than a workforce shortage.
"It is about finding the right incentives for people to go and work in these areas," she said.
"It is equally as difficult to find a private dentist in some of these areas as a public one."
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Dr Raphael spoke of the Oral Health Fee For Service voucher system - issued in emergency cases or when a public dental service cannot provide the required treatment - as a possible incentive.
"If there was some assurity for practitioners that they would be given a certain amount of their work time doing work through the voucher system, then it might make practices in some of these regions sustainable and it might be an incentive that gets people to move to the bush," she said.
Dr Jonas said that dental treatments in the region tend to be "episodic", with people turning to their GP for antibiotics and painkillers that temporarily relieve pain until it wears off "and they go back through the cycle again".
"This process could have been going on for 18 months to two years before it got to that intractable situation," he said.
Aside from access issues, Dr Jonas said dental risk factors - such as a lack of fluoride water - are higher in regional and rural areas as well.
He said he can tell "to the minute" when a patient hasn't been exposed to fluoride water, with the different like "day or night".
Wagga dentist and board member of ADA NSW Kathleen Matthews previously told the Daily Advertiser that locals may have let their dental hygiene slip while in lockdown earlier this year.
She also said that some people may have altered their diets in lockdown, consuming more sugar and soft drinks as comfort food, making the need to have a dental check-up even greater.
Hearings as part of the inquiry will continue in February next year.
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