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Distribution of dentists in the Greater Tokyo Area, Japan

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 69; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/idj.12446

1875-595X

Takayoshi Hashimura, Tetsuya Tanimoto, Tomohiro Morita, Masahiro Kami,

Dental Health and Care Utilization

Introduction: Japan is considered to have an overabundance of dentists; however, there are scarce data on regional inequalities in the ratio of dentists to patients. We examined these inequalities in Japan’s Greater Tokyo Area – otherwise known as the Kanto region, and the world’s most populous metropolitan area – by subdividing it into small- and medium-sized medical care zones. Methods: We calculated the number of dentists per 100,000 population using the 2012 Survey of Physicians, Dentists, and Pharmacists for the three medical district tiers [primary medical care zones: municipalities (cities, towns, villages and special wards); secondary medical care zones: multiple adjacent municipalities; and tertiary care zones: prefectures]. We also estimated the influence of having a dental school in the district or an adjacent district on the number of dentists. Results: The number of dentists per 100,000 population was 79.2 across the whole Kanto region; the range for each type of medical care zone was as follows: 65.3–126.4 at the tertiary level; 38.0–929.6 at the secondary level; and 0–3,087.6 at the primary level. The median Gini coefficient among tertiary medical care zones was 0.16 (range 0.11–0.36). The median number of dentists per 100,000 population was 273.8 in primary medical care zones that had a dental school, 79.9 in adjacent zones, and 59.6 in other zones. Conclusions: We identified significant inequalities in the number of dentists among the medical care zones, and the presence of a dental school had a major influence on this number.