Access to dental care: A comparison of medicine/dentistry and the role of a regular source

Recent studies have found more equal access to physicians, both in terms of volume of visits and having a regular source. This paper compares physician care with dental care, looking particularly at a regular source of dental care. A regular source should be very important in dental care, given the emphasis on prevention and regular visits. This paper examines data from a statewide sample of 1, 329 Rhode Island residents in 1974 to determine what percentage of the population has a regular source and what the relationship is with socioeconomic variables. Most persons (91 per cent) report a regular source of medical care. The figure is somewhat lower (73 per cent) for reporting of a regular source of dental care. Socioeconomic differentials are still important, as only one-half of those in families earning less than $5, 000 and 59 per cent of those in families where the head of the household has less than an eighth grade education have a regular source of dental care. The relationship held when controlling for variety of social and demographic variables and partial correlation analysis was used to determine that income, as compared with education, is the more important variable in explaining differentials. Using discriminant function analysis, age, sex, race, education and income allowed one to correctly predict 70.7 per cent of those who have a regular source of dental care and 61.5 per cent of those without a regular source of dental care.