Financing of dental services in Iran

Financing of dental services in Iran
Reza Hossein Pour , Hamidreza Saffari,Aliasghar A.K.Daliri
Introduction: Nowadays, in contrast to past, the importance of oral health and its effects on society's general health is evident and there is a wide agreement on it. The financing methods of dental services would influence what patients demand of dental services, and how much and what type of services dentists supply.
Method: this is a cross-sectional study which has investigated annual budgetary act of health ministry, financial documents of insurance companies and other related documents and reports to describe situation of dental services financing in Iran during 2007-2008.
Results: The analysis of data showed that in 2007, about 0.18 percentage of total governmental health expenditures allocated to dental services. Of this amount, 20 percentages (i.e., about 0.04% 0f total government health expenditure) has been spent by Health Ministry of Iran and remaining spent by health insurance programs. In 2008, an important event has been happened in financing of dental services. Although, health ministry's expenditures were remained constant, the expenditures of health insurance companies on dental services have significantly been increased to approximately 1.04 % of total government health expenditures. This increase was due to two major changes: first, health training, scaling and filling were added to basic health benefit package of health insurance companies, and the other 6-12 age group has been determined as targeted population. The share of dental services in total governmental health expenditures reach to 1.07 % by this increasing.
Conclusion: It seems that proportion of dental services from the total health expenditure is low in Iran (especially in comparison to some developing countries such as turkey) and therefore can not achieve to main goals of health system that have been characterized by WHO to 2020.