Regional distributions of overall dentists and institutional dentists in Taiwan in 2019

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: Taiwan is facing a huge urban-rural gap in the human resources of dentists between cities and counties. Although the postgraduate year training program for dentists (PGYD) was implemented in Taiwan in 2010, the uneven distribution of dentists is still a serious problem. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the distributions of overall dentists and dental training institutions and their dentists (so-called institutional dentists) in each city and county in 2019 to further analyze the regional distributions of overall dentists and institutional dentists in Taiwan. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study collected the numbers of dentists, dental training institutions, and institutional dentists in each city and county in 2019 for evaluating the regional distributions of dentists and institutional dentists in Taiwan. RESULTS: The numbers of dentists and institutional dentists in municipalities were significantly higher than those in non-municipalities in Taiwan, respectively. The coefficient of variation was greatest for dentists in the single-system institutions (1.72) and program-management institutions (1.87). The coefficients of correlation between the dentist index and institutional dentist index were R(2) = 0.9805 (P < 0.001) for municipalities, R(2) = 0.4523 (P < 0.01) for non-municipalities, and R(2) = 0.7691 (P < 0.001) for nationwide. CONCLUSION: The dentist manpower and dental training institutions are concentrated in municipalities of Taiwan. The quantitative and qualitative improvement of collaborating institutions in the PGYD system may have an influence on the distribution of new-entry dentists and contribute to establishment of an effective regional dental health care service.