There’s a dental crisis happening in Alabama, as some patients have to wait up to a year for oral surgeries and dentists say they are struggling to keep their offices open.
“The access to care in Alabama is worse than any state I’ve ever practiced in,” said Carson Cruise, a pediatric dentist in Florence. “Mississippi is usually the worst at everything when it comes to health metrics. But if Mississippi is the floor, Alabama brought a shovel.”
In 2023, Alabama had the nation’s second-lowest ratio of dentists per population, according to the American Dental Association at just 41.6 dentists per 100,000 residents. Alabama narrowly topped Arkansas, which had 41.2 dentists for every 100,000 people.
Both fall far below the national rate of about 60 dentists per 100,000 residents.
Read more: Alabama’s decaying dental care ‘necessitates immediate attention’/AL.com