ArticleBMC oral health2025
Control, access and professionalism: a qualitative evaluation of Australian dental practitioners attitudes to expanding medicare to include more dental services.
Article in BMC oral health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAustralia benefits from one of the most comprehensive publicly-funded health systems in the world, however, dentistry hardly features at all within the provisions of the scheme. As a result, the majority of dental care in Australia is provided within the private sector, with the States and Territories providing a small eligibility-controlled service. This research examines Australian dental practitioner’s attitudes to the conceptual expansion of Medicare to include more dental services.
methodsThis research utilises the qualitative methodology of thematic analysis to explore the attitudes and beliefs of dental practitioners in relation to expanding Medicare to include more dental services. Participants were recruited from a pool of dental practitioners who had responded to a survey on Medicare expansion to include dental care. Participants were interviewed using an interview guide, with semi-structured questions. Interviews took place online and were recorded. Iterative rounds of coding allowed constituent themes to emerge for analysis.
resultsA total of 12 participants were interviewed before saturation was reached, with three main overarching themes developing through successive rounds of coding. The three themes identified were: Professional Factors; Nature and Organisation of a Potential Scheme; and, Oral Health as Health.
conclusionsProfessional attitudes to the expansion of Medicare are not simple or binary considerations. Dental practitioners are highly sensitive to the high cost of dentistry as an impediment to access and would welcome government assistance to help those who struggle with the costs of private dentistry to experience better oral health. However, participants also shared their anxieties in relation to how Medicare increasing its scope in relation to dentistry might herald unwelcome impacts for business models in dental care. Participants also noted the staunch self-interest to opposing comprehensive Medicare expansion from the Australian Dental Association.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.