Access to Dentists

This indicator reports the number of dentists per 100,000 population. This indicator includes all dentists - qualified as having a doctorate in dental surgery (D.D.S.) or dental medicine (D.M.D.), who are licensed by the state to practice dentistry and who are practicing within the scope of that license.
Report Area Total Population, 2015 Dentists, 2015 Dentists, Rate per 100,000 Pop.
Franklin County, PA 153,638 67 43.61
Pennsylvania 12,802,503 8,368 65.4
United States 321,418,820 210,832 65.6
Note: This indicator is compared with the state average. Green - Better than state average, Red - Worse than state average.
Data Source: US Department of Health & Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Area Health Resource File. 2015. Source geography: County
Access to Dentists, Rate (Per 100,000 Pop.) by Year, 2010 Through 2015
This indicator reports the rate of dentists per 100,000 population by year.
Report Area 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Franklin County, PA 35.4 34.5 36.4 38.8 40.6 43.6
Pennsylvania 57.4 59.1 60.6 62.5 64.4 65.4
United States 58.9 60.3 61.7 63.2 64.7 65.6

Website Updated December 11 2017 Site Reviewed January 05 2018

Access to Dentists

Data Background

The Area Health Resource File (AHRF) is a database of information about the U.S. health care system, maintained and released annually by the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The AHRF contains more than 6,000 variables, aggregated for each of the nation's counties. The ARF contains information on health facilities, health professions, health status, economic activity, health training programs, measures of resource scarcity, and socioeconomic and environmental characteristics. In addition, the basic file contains geographic codes and descriptors which enable it to be linked to many other files and to aggregate counties into various geographic groupings.

The ARF integrates data from numerous primary data sources including: the American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association, the American Dental Association, the American Osteopathic Association, the Bureau of the Census, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (formerly Health Care Financing Administration), Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Center for Health Statistics and the Veteran’s Administration.


For more information, please visit HRSA’s Area Health Resource File website.

Methodology

Data for this indicator are acquired from the 2015-2016 Area Health Resource database. For this indicator, the 2015-16 AHRF reports firgurs from teh Center from Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) National Provider Identification (NPI) File. This resource includes all dentists - qualified as having a doctorate in dental surgery (D.D.S.) or dental medicine (D.M.D.), who are licensed by the state to practice dentistry and who are practices within the scope of that license. Rates are calculated per 100,000 total population using the following formula:

Provider Rate = [ Number of Dentists ] / [ Total Population ] * 100,000

Population figures in the AHRF are from the U.S. Census Bureau's Annual Resident Population Estimates, Estimated Components of Resident Population Change and Rates of the Components of Resident Population Change for States and Counties: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2015. For detailed documentation or to view the original data, please view the documentation included in the 2015-2016 AHRF, which can be downloaded here.

Notes

Race and Ethnicity
Statistics by race and ethnicity are not provided for this indicator.

Data Limitations
Reported data represent summaries limited by county boundaries. When comparing rates, consider the following:
1) Rates assume uniform distribution of both establishments and populations throughout the county and may not detect disparities in access for rural or minority populations.
2) Summaries may over-represent or under-represent county rates when populations or establishments are highly concentrated on county border lines.
3) Rates do not describe quality of the establishment or utilization frequency.

Courtesy: Community Commons, <www.communitycommons.org>, December 2017