Abstract
Equity in health and health service are the ultimate goals of Universal Health Coverage. One key performance indicator for achieving that goal is about accessibility. However, Thailand in previous 10 years, while the number of dentists in service system was steadily increased, the utilization rates for dental service were nearly stable at lower than 10 percent. This study aimed to analyze utilization of dental services in 3 categories (oral health prevention, simple dental treatment, and complicated dental treatment), by using secondary data from the series of 5 Health and Welfare Surveys from 2007 to 2015. The results showed an increased number of people who received some dental service in the last 12 months. However, the number of people who did not receive any dental service were nearly the same in every survey. Moreover, people with unmet dental service need still exist. The proportion of complicated dental service use was increasing while simple level was in the contrast. Therefore, dental service productivity might be mainly from those complicated dental services. This would lead to a wider gap of accessibility to dental service among the population in the long-term. The findings from this study might be useful for planning and monitoring the future dental service system.
