Recently, TDMR filed an open records request with the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to find out how many individual Texas dentists are currently participating in Medicaid and how those participation numbers have changed since the Frew settlement in 2007.
Overall participation up by 223%
The results are now in – the total number of dentists providing Medicaid services has expanded by 223% from 2,919 at the end of 2008 to 6,520 at the end of 2015.
Orthodontists in decline
However, over that same time, the number of orthodontists within that overall group first increased from 94 in 2008, peaked in 2012 at 420 and has been on a steady decline ever since. At the end of 2015, the number was 340.
We would like to thank the staff at the HHSC open records office for their assistance in having these figures compiled.