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Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia

BACKGROUND: To explore the profile of patients and treatment delivered at specialist referral centres for individuals with special needs. METHODS: A cross-sectional audit was conducted of the health records of all patients with appointments at two of Australia’s largest referral centres for patients...

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Autores principales: Lim, Mathew Albert Wei Ting, Liberali, Sharon Andrea Corinne, Borromeo, Gelsomina Lucia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733299/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33308211
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-020-01354-6
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author Lim, Mathew Albert Wei Ting
Liberali, Sharon Andrea Corinne
Borromeo, Gelsomina Lucia
author_facet Lim, Mathew Albert Wei Ting
Liberali, Sharon Andrea Corinne
Borromeo, Gelsomina Lucia
author_sort Lim, Mathew Albert Wei Ting
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: To explore the profile of patients and treatment delivered at specialist referral centres for individuals with special needs. METHODS: A cross-sectional audit was conducted of the health records of all patients with appointments at two of Australia’s largest referral centres for patients with special needs, the Integrated Special Needs Department at the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne and the Special Needs Unit at the Adelaide Dental Hospital, for the month of August 2015. RESULTS: The profile of patients treated at these specialist units demonstrates the diversity of individuals with additional health care needs that general dentists feel require specialised oral health care. The Adelaide-based clinic had a greater proportion of complex medical patients in comparison to those treated in Melbourne who were more likely to have a disability or psychiatric condition and were less likely to be able to self-consent for treatment. Interestingly, despite similar workforce personnel numbers, there were approximately twice as many appointments at the Special Needs Unit in Adelaide than the Integrated Special Needs Department in Melbourne during the study period which may have reflected differences in workforce composition with a greater use of dental auxiliaries at the Adelaide clinic. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study provide an initial profile of patients with special needs referred for specialist care in Australia. However, the differences in patient profiles between the two units require further investigation into the possible influence of service provision models and barriers to access of care for individuals with special needs and to ensure equitable access to health care.
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spelling pubmed-77332992020-12-14 Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia Lim, Mathew Albert Wei Ting Liberali, Sharon Andrea Corinne Borromeo, Gelsomina Lucia BMC Oral Health Research Article BACKGROUND: To explore the profile of patients and treatment delivered at specialist referral centres for individuals with special needs. METHODS: A cross-sectional audit was conducted of the health records of all patients with appointments at two of Australia’s largest referral centres for patients with special needs, the Integrated Special Needs Department at the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne and the Special Needs Unit at the Adelaide Dental Hospital, for the month of August 2015. RESULTS: The profile of patients treated at these specialist units demonstrates the diversity of individuals with additional health care needs that general dentists feel require specialised oral health care. The Adelaide-based clinic had a greater proportion of complex medical patients in comparison to those treated in Melbourne who were more likely to have a disability or psychiatric condition and were less likely to be able to self-consent for treatment. Interestingly, despite similar workforce personnel numbers, there were approximately twice as many appointments at the Special Needs Unit in Adelaide than the Integrated Special Needs Department in Melbourne during the study period which may have reflected differences in workforce composition with a greater use of dental auxiliaries at the Adelaide clinic. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study provide an initial profile of patients with special needs referred for specialist care in Australia. However, the differences in patient profiles between the two units require further investigation into the possible influence of service provision models and barriers to access of care for individuals with special needs and to ensure equitable access to health care. BioMed Central 2020-12-11 /pmc/articles/PMC7733299/ /pubmed/33308211 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-020-01354-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Lim, Mathew Albert Wei Ting
Liberali, Sharon Andrea Corinne
Borromeo, Gelsomina Lucia
Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia
title Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia
title_full Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia
title_fullStr Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia
title_full_unstemmed Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia
title_short Utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in Australia
title_sort utilisation of dental services for people with special health care needs in australia
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7733299/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33308211
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12903-020-01354-6
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