Dentist Kelly Farmer inspects the teeth of Nathan Sowers, 14, Lawrence, at the Douglas County Dental Clinic in 2009. A new task force has been created to study issues involving dental care in Kansas. The clinic accepts patients who are on Medicaid — something few dentists do.

Rural Kansas is facing a serious shortage of dentists in the next three to five years, according to a report released Monday by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.

Of the state’s 105 counties, 91 were designated by KDHE’s Office of Local and Rural Health as having current dental shortages.

Dr. Katherine Weno, director of the KDHE’s Bureau of Oral Health, said the state’s dental work force is aging, especially in rural communities, and recruitment is tough.

“We do not have a dental school in Kansas, so we don’t have a ready pipeline of dentists that come into the state every year. We have to recruit dentists from out of state,” she said.

Weno said most of the state’s dentists graduate from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Dentistry.

“Trying to recruit them back to rural counties if they are not from rural areas is particularly difficult, so that’s why we have a lot of issues with work force shortages in rural counties in western Kansas,” she said.

Among the findings of the report:

• The average age of a Kansas dentist is 50.

• Older dentists tend to practice in less densely populated areas.

• Only 25 percent of dentists who graduated from urban high schools practice in rural settings.

• The most important reasons given for why dentists choose to practice in Kansas is because they are Kansans and have family ties to the state or enjoy the quality of life and cost of living.

The Office of Local and Rural Health also reported that 57 counties didn’t have an adequate supply of dentists who accepted Medicaid or offered service to low-income residents. Douglas County was among them.

That’s no surprise to Julie Branstrom, executive director of the Douglas County Dental Clinic, which serves low-income residents.

“I think our county would be in bigger trouble if the clinic wasn’t here,” she said. “If the clinic wasn’t serving Medicaid patients, I honestly don’t know where people would go because I can count on one hand the number of dentists in Lawrence that take Medicaid.”

Through August, the Douglas County clinic had 4,053 appointments, a 9 percent increase when compared with the same period last year. Additionally, the clinic has seen a 26 percent increase in the number of uninsured adults who qualify for services at its lowest fee level. That level is $22,050 per year for a family of four.

Dr. Jason Eberhart-Phillips, state health officer, said such findings are of concern because poor oral health is connected to a host of other chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and poor pregnancy outcomes.

“It is clear that oral health professionals have a crucial role to play in the state’s primary work force, and they are critical to maintaining the good health of Kansans,” he said.

As the Oral Health Workforce Assessment was being completed, KDHE’s Bureau of Oral Health learned it would receive $355,153 in federal funding for the first year of a three-year Health Resources Administration Systems Grant to create and implement an oral health professional recruitment program.

KDHE plans to create a dental work force cabinet that will discuss work force initiatives and direct recruitment activities.

“We will be looking at a lot of data that we collected,” Weno said. “We are going to do some targeted dental recruitment to try and help some of these communities recruit a dentist.”

She hopes to be able to offer high school and college students an incentive to go into dentistry and then practice in underserved Kansas areas. Such an incentive could be forgiveness of their student loans.

“The grant could not have come at a better time for those Kansans that go without access to oral health care,” Weno said.

To view the complete report, visit www.kdheks.gov/ohi. A public meeting is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. Sept. 22 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Wichita in conjunction with the Kansas Public Health Association Conference.