Impact of South Carolina's Medicaid fluoride varnish reimbursement policy on children's receipt of fluoride varnish in medical and dental settings.

OBJECTIVE: We estimated the effect of South Carolina's (SC) Medicaid fluoride varnish (FV) reimbursement policy on children's receipt of fluoride varnish in medical (MFV) and dental (DFV) settings.

METHODS: We obtained data from SC Medicaid enrollment and claims files for children ≤ 47 months of age across State Fiscal Years (SFY) 2008-2013 and created a panel dataset of 52,841 children representing 126,464 child-years of observation. Pooled multivariate logistic regression models were estimated to identify factors associated with a higher likelihood of a child receiving one or more MFV or DFV treatments.

RESULTS: The FV rates per child-year were 1 percent for physicians and 23 percent for dentists, respectively. The child-year rate for receipt of FV from both a physician and a dentist was less than one-third of one percent.

CONCLUSIONS: A policy designed to increase access to FV treatments from physicians and dentists for children up to forty-seven months of age was not successful for physicians; however, the positive findings for dentists were promising.