Dental Health, New Help for Dental Treatment Options

[Kaz]

Hi I just wanted to make sure everyone knows about the new Dental Health arrangements under the 2007/08 budget. If you have a chronic illness & require dental treatment your GP can now refer you to a Private Dentist whose charges will be completely covered by Medicare (from memory about $4000 in any one year).
This is because the NSW Dept of Health Dental Service will just never be able to cope and the amount of chronically ill people whose dental health is impacting on their general health is increasing and had some good publicity this year. Anyway this may help some of you who don't know about it - hope so ! Love Kaz

[Sarge]

Hi Kaz - do you know if "Chronic illness" includes disability such as spinal cord injury or is that classed as "chronic injury"? I know it is semantics but I guess what I am asking is - are paraplegics and quadriplegics covered by this Dental Health legislation.

Even though 'not being able to afford it' was always my excuse for not going to the dentist, it would be great to be able to get free dental care.

Cheers

[Kaz]

Hi Kaz - do you know if "Chronic illness" includes disability such as spinal cord injury or is that classed as "chronic injury"? I know it is semantics but I guess what I am asking is - are paraplegics and quadriplegics covered by this Dental Health legislation.

Even though 'not being able to afford it' was always my excuse for not going to the dentist, it would be great to be able to get free dental care.

Cheers

Hi Sarge - I do know that it applies to everyone on a long term management plan with their GP -whether that is for illness or injury doesn't matter as long as you are on that long term care plan (involving multidisciplinary care eg physio OT continence advisor), which I presume anyone with a spinal injury would be, and where your dental health has the potential to impact on your general health (this is a no brainer as last week there were news headlines on how bad teeth can cause heart disease). Hope this helps have a yarn to your GP.

[Sarge]

That's great - Thanks Kaz

[trisha rich]

Hi I just wanted to make sure everyone knows about the new Dental Health arrangements under the 2007/08 budget. If you have a chronic illness & require dental treatment your GP can now refer you to a Private Dentist whose charges will be completely covered by Medicare (from memory about $4000 in any one year).
This is because the NSW Dept of Health Dental Service will just never be able to cope and the amount of chronically ill people whose dental health is impacting on their general health is increasing and had some good publicity this year. Anyway this may help some of you who don't know about it - hope so ! Love Kaz

Thanks for the information kaz. I really appreciated it.