Kansas Health Institute | Information For Policy Makers. Health for Kansans.

TOPEKA — Several Kansas safety-net clinics have agreed to take part in a federal grant aimed at providing parents access to free dental care.

The participating clinics are not being named, however.

Instead, low- and moderate-income parents are asked to call the Kansas Association for the Medically Underinsured to find out if a clinic in or near their community is offering the service.

“That way, we can help manage the volume of calls to our clinics from people all over the state," said KAMU Executive Director Cathy Harding.

The KAMU telephone number is 785-233-8483.

Harding said she and several clinic administrators decided to funnel calls through the KAMU office because they were worried that callers – many of them desperate for dental care – would flood the clinics’ telephone lines.

“We’re hoping to avoid that,” she said.

To be eligible, a parent must:

• Be uninsured;

• Be a Kansas resident;

• Have one or more children not yet 19 years old;

• Live in a household with less than $56,857 in annual income.

KAMU is co-administering the $1.4 million grant with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services. The grant runs through Sept. 30.

Sixteen of the state’s 40 safety-net clinic sites offer dental service, Harding said, but not all 16 can afford to take part in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grant.

Generally, the grant will reimburse a clinic for 80 percent of its standard Medicaid fee-for-service rate. The remaining 20 percent would have to come from elsewhere or be borne by the clinics.

“Some clinics’ budgets won’t let them do that. They can’t afford it,” Harding said in an earlier interview with KHI News Service. “The other catch is that payments will be made quarterly, which, again, some clinics may not be able to afford because of the cash flow problems.”

Some clinics, Harding said, will not be able see patients from outside their catchment areas.

The Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas is taking part in the grant.

“We haven’t said much about it, we haven’t put out a news release. I doubt we will,” said Krista Postai, the clinic’s executive director. “We haven’t because we’re already booked to the end of August and if we’re going to open ourselves up we’d like to get those we know have been waiting.”

Postai said the clinic expects to put the grant money to good use.

“What this is going to do is help some people pay their bills who were really going to have a hard time otherwise,” she said. “Plus, we’re going to see if we can use the grant to do some direct marketing to groups like child care providers and (school) paraprofessionals. A lot of them can’t afford insurance.”