According to data released by the Czech Dental Association (CSK) on Wednesday, about 20% of health insurance holders in the Czech Republic do not have a registered dentist.
The situation is most serious in Prague, Karlovy Vary and West Bohemian regions, while the highest proportion of residents in Vysočina and Zlín regions have registered dentists.
Despite this, the demand for dental services has continued to grow in recent years. In the past four years, the proportion of registered dental patients has risen by 18%.
“In the past two years alone, we have provided dental treatment to about 2.2 million people,” said Roman Šmucler, president of the Czech Dental Association.
He added that if someone does not have a registered dentist, they can seek assistance from their health insurance company, which is legally obliged to help them obtain dental services.
There are currently about 6,800 dentists in the country, of which about 1,000 are not signed up by the main Czech health insurance companies such as VZP.
Many dentists choose not to participate in the public health insurance system and instead see patients privately, mainly because they are dissatisfied with the amount of health insurance compensation, which they believe is far lower than it should be.
The Czech National Dental Association estimates that there are still about 1 million people who have not completed the registration. Some do not know how to register due to lack of information; others choose to see a private dental clinic because they are worried about the long waiting time or complicated procedures.
The country as a whole faces the dilemma of insufficient number of dentists, resulting in long waiting times for dental treatment. According to data from the World Health Organization, there were only 7.3 dentists per 10,000 people in the Czech Republic in 2019, lower than the EU average of 7.7.
Dentists’ income is relatively high in cities, resulting in a greater shortage of dentists in rural areas. Many small towns even attract dentists to practice by providing subsidies such as housing, vehicles and clinic equipment. In some places, there is even a phenomenon of “fighting for dentists”.
After a dentist in South Moravia announced that he would accept new patients, he attracted nearly a thousand people to queue up overnight for registration. This incident highlights the tightness of dental resources.
Moravian dentist Pavel Gratcl pointed out that complex procedures and cumbersome bureaucracy are also important reasons for the lack of dentists, which makes it difficult for many qualified dentists to open their businesses.
In an interview with iRozhlas.cz, Ladislav Friedrich, chairman of the Czech Health Insurance Association, said that the public health insurance system should increase the motivation of dentists to stay in the public system through financial incentives. He also pointed out that the proportion of dentists in public insurance expenditures has increased in recent years.
The relatively high proportion of people without registered dentists in the Czech Republic has become a manifestation of a structural problem. Experts believe that increasing the number of dentists and shortening waiting times are the key to alleviating this dilemma.
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