Provides for dentist loan repayment and practice support

• Democratic11
• Republican7

◆ The sponsor's argument

Why Patricia Fahy says this is needed

Despite graduating 750 dentists annually - among the highest number of any state - New York continues to struggle with unmet need, particularly with respect to Medicaid recipients and other vulnerable populations. Several barriers contribute to the challenges of providing access to dental care to low-income, rural or developmentally disabled individ- uals, including the exorbitant costs of attending dental school and establishing a dental practice, perennially insufficient Medicaid reimbursement rates, and too few dentists practicing in rural and high need areas. 1 This bill seeks to attract more dentists to practice in underserved areas by making it more affordable for them to do so through student loan repayment and practice support. New York State currently has 161 dental Health Practitioner Shortage Areas (HPSAs), including 117 designated HPSA facilities and 44 desig- nated HPSA population groups (mostly Medicaid eligible populations). 2 This means that each of these designations has a population-to-provider ratio of at least 4000 people per 1 dentist. Because NYS currently meets only 16.15% of the documented need, the federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) estimates that New York needs an additional 588 dentists to remove all of its dental HPSA designations. 3 The NYS Department of Health also recognizes the need for additional dentists in strategic locations and, beginning in 2010, identified stra- tegies for increasing access to dental services. 4 Dental school graduates typically have greater student loan debt than their medical school counterparts. In 2023, the average medical school graduate owed $265,000, whereas the average dental school graduate owed $296,500. 5 To entice dentists to practice in New York's dental HPSAs, this bill offers funding for loan repayment and practice support that is comparable to the funding currently offered to physicians; it provides for up to $50,000 annually for three years for dentists practicing in underserved areas in hospitals or other facilities or up to $70,000 annually for three years to dentists practicing in underserved areas in private practice.

This is the sponsor's own case for the bill, quoted from their memorandum. It is not Agora's description of what the bill does.