As state and federal governments turn away from longheld dental care norms, experts are arguing it’s more crucial than ever for private industry to fill the gap.
For years, dentists have contended with issues like a lack of payer reimbursement for routine dental services and widescale provider shortages. Medicare’s website states it doesn’t cover dental services in most cases. In 2024, Medicaid reimbursed an average per state of 66.6% of private insurance rates for kids and 49.8% for adults, according to the American Dental Association (ADA).
Now, both Utah and Florida have banned fluoride in public drinking water. The CDC’s Division of Oral Health, which collected data and supported things like free school dental sealant programs, was one of several departments gutted on April 1, according to the ADA.
“We’re in a very volatile environment, let me just call it that,” ADA President Brett Kessler told Healthcare Brew. “The Trump administration is trying to decentralize a lot of the things that the US government would take care of. And so it’s cutting things…but he also knows that we’re America, and we’ll find creative ways to pick up the pieces.”
Kessler has high hopes this toothache can be addressed.
Private sector opens wide. The ADA’s Forsyth Institute, the organization’s research and innovation hub, is focusing on finding funding “that can happen through the private industry, can happen through nongovernment foundations,” Kessler said.
There are also advancements in technology, driven by the private sector, that will make dental care more accessible in the coming years, he added. About 57 million in the US lived in a dental professional shortage area in 2024, according to the CDC.
“Technology—in the private sector, especially—is going to drive increases in efficacy, meaning better care and efficiency at a cheaper cost,” he said.
There’s an app for that. One example: startup digital dental care platform Grin aims to provide a private sector solution with quick virtual mouth scanning via an accessory that attaches to a smart phone. Investors include CareQuest Innovation Partners as well as venture capital companies Triventures and SpringRock Ventures.
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So far, Grin has done 1.5 million+ patient scans and has about 3,000 physicians using its platform worldwide.
The scan—which doesn’t need to be done by a dentist—can be sent to a provider who can review it at their convenience, CEO and founder Adam Schulhof told Healthcare Brew.
The company even has augmented artificial intelligence trained on patient scan data that flags early signs of conditions like gingival inflammation and plaque buildup, Schulhof said. (The findings are double-checked by one of Grin’s clinically trained experts before being shared with patients, he emphasized.)
Fixing the public/private gap. Schulhof said technology like this can be vital in rural areas with too few dental professionals to see everyone. In 2024, about 67% of dental health professional shortage areas were in rural communities, according to the CDC.
“Think about the opportunity where every single child, for example, starting in kindergarten, gets scanned,” he said. “Now, we can at least triage the patient population.”
He’s hopeful the federal government will see value in tech like this and support it.
Case studies on Grin’s website suggest the tech helps providers see more patients quicker, increasing their revenue. One practice, Richter Orthodontics in Greely, Colorado, was reportedly able to cut down in-person visits for things like aligners from every eight weeks to every 12 weeks by using Grin, saving the office an estimated 875 visits and $174,000 a year.
Some of Grin’s services are also accessible through Medicaid.
“The private sector’s got to build the technology, but now is really when the public sector has to actually start embracing that technology,” Schulhof said.