Recommendations for improving dental care for dentate home-based older people: A qualitative New Zealand study

Abstract

Background and objective: A small number of national studies have explored the barriers to older people accessing dental care; however, to date none have investigated older people's recommendations for overcoming these barriers.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 40 dentate older people (65 years and over) who resided in New Zealand's Otago region and received home-support. A joint inductive thematic analysis was undertaken, based on the constant comparative method.

Results: Recommendations for boosting community-dwelling older people's access to dental care included publicly funding or subsiding the cost of dental care for older people, aligning the pension with the real cost of living, and making the environment at Work and Income less hostile and the emergency dental grant more readily available, making dental clinics more accessible, initiating domiciliary dental care, having mobile dental clinics visit neighbourhoods with high proportions of older people, as well as subsidised transport to the dental clinic. Other suggestions were having GPs, pharmacists and social workers emphasise oral health during appointments, along with dental education campaigns.

Conclusion: In order to boost the rates of dental care access among older New Zealanders who receive home support, multiple structural changes are necessary, but these should primarily focus on reducing the cost and increasing accessibility.

Keywords: dentate; home support; old people; oral health.