Oral health utilization and awareness of Ayushman Bharat (PMJAY) health insurance scheme in Bangalore

Background: Oral health has a significant impact on quality of life of an individual but often an overlooked component of overall health. Oral diseases are emerging as a major public health concern in India and Ayushman Bharat Yojana focuses to help enhance oral health care of the entire nation. We aimed to assess the awareness and utilization of dental services under Ayushman Bharat health scheme among outpatients in Bangalore hospitals.Methods: A mixed method comprising case analysis and cross sectional observation was carried out. The annual reports data of Ayushman Bharat scheme in Karnataka was obtained for the case analysis. A cross sectional study was carried out among 150 adults in five Bangalore hospitals and data was collected using self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistical analysis was done using SPSS 24.Results: The study showed that 65.7% of the participants were unaware of Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme. 25% of the participants were the beneficiaries of this scheme. Only 6% of the study participants availed general treatment under Ayushman Bharat and the treatment availed were for heart surgeries, labour and child birth, tuberculosis and cancer treatments. 12.5% of our participants were aware about dental coverage included in Ayushman Bharat insurance scheme and only 1 participant availed jaw surgery after road traffic accident under this scheme.Conclusions: This study showed there is high Out-Of-Pocket Payments (OOP) spending and lack of knowledge regarding dental coverage under Ayushman Bharat scheme.

The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on Dental Care: An Integrative Literature Review

The goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to increase access to health insurance and decrease health care cost while improving health care quality. With more articles examining the relationship between one of the ACA provisions and dental health outcomes, we systematically reviewed the effect of the ACA on dental care coverage and access to dental services. We searched literature using the National Library of Medicine’s Medline (PubMed) and Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science between January 2010 and November 2020. We identified 33 articles related to dental coverage, and access/utilization of dental care services. This systematic review of studies showed that the ACA resulted in gains in dental coverage for adults and children, whereas results were mixed with dental care access. Overall, we found that the policy led to a decrease in cost barriers, an increase in private dental coverage for young adults, and increased dental care use among low-income childless adults. The implementation of the ACA was not directly associated with dental insurance coverage among people in the U.S. However, results suggest positive spillover effects of the ACA on dental care coverage and utilization by people in the national level dataset.