Pediatric dentists in Alaska say they are facing serious problems with Medicaid paperwork since the state changed its policies on service authorizations last year. Those providers are worried that kids in rural Alaska are losing access to care.
“It’s worse than we would have even been capable of imagining,” said Meghan Foster, of Denali Pediatric Dentistry in Anchorage.
In December 2022 the Alaska Department of Health, or DOH, introduced new regulations for Medicaid coverage. As part of those changes, dentists must now seek prior authorization for pediatric procedures under certain conditions—for example, when a child needs three or more teeth to be extracted or crowned in a single appointment, or when a kid needs more than four extractions or four or more crowns in a single year.
Source: Rural Kids’ Dental Care Is Suffering Under New Medicaid Policies, Dentists Say / The Nome Nugget