PROVIDENCE – The state’s Medicaid dental program, RIte Smiles, celebrated its fifth birthday on Sept. 1, with more than 55,000 Rhode Island children up to age 11 now enrolled, promoting primary and preventive dental care. The dental program is administered by United Healthcare Dental.
When it began in 2006, there were only about 27 dental providers in Rhode Island who offered dental care to children on Medicaid; today, there are 202 dentists at more than 380 locations delivering dental services to children on Medicaid, according to Beryl Kenyon, spokeswoman for the R.I. Executive Office of Health and Human Services.
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“In the past, access was a major barrier to children receiving Medicaid getting routine dental care, or any dental services at all,” said Steven M. Costantino, secretary of EOHHS. “We are greatly pleasdenred with the enormous increase of dental providers in our state, under RIte Smiles.”
New data shows that Rhode Island is doing much better than the national average, according to Costantino. Only 44 percent of Medicaid enrolled children in the U.S. received any dental services annually, according to data from the Pew Center on the States. However, in Rhode Island, the participation rate in 2010 was 46 percent for children three to fives years, 64 percent for children six to eight, and 71 percent for children ages nine and 10.
