Travel burden and dentist bypass among dentally insured children.

Objectives: Using administrative data from Iowa Medicaid and a large private dental insurer, we compared distance to the nearest primary care dentist for children ages 6-15 in 2012. Additionally, we examined rates of provider bypass in both populations as an indicator of spatial accessibility to dental care.

Methods: We calculated measures of travel burden, including distance to the nearest primary care dentist and distance to current primary care dentist.