73%
of Virginia dentists treated zero Medicaid patients in 2022.
DMAS Access Report, Nov 2022
Virginia Public Dental Access Project
Virginia's Medicaid dental access crisis, mapped and measured.
Independent public-interest research documenting where Medicaid dental care is failing in Virginia, and why. Built to inform the policy that can fix it.
84%
of Virginia's 133 localities are designated federal dental shortage areas.
HRSA BCD HPSA, 2026
30–40%
of private-insurance rates — what Virginia Medicaid pays dentists. The ADA's threshold for meaningful participation is 70–75%.
ADA Health Policy Institute
What we publish
Three tools, one mission
Each project documents a piece of the access crisis — and together they form the evidence base for policy reform.
Project I
Medicaid Dental Access
An interactive map of provider participation, reimbursement, and access gaps across all 133 Virginia localities.
Open dashboardProject II
Find a Medicaid Dentist
A ZIP-code search for Virginia dentists who accept Medicaid. Anonymous patient-experience data flows back to our research.
Search by ZIPProject III
National Policy Tracker
A comparative database of state-level Medicaid dental legislation: reimbursement rates, bill status, participation outcomes.
Open trackerAbout
Coverage without providers is paper coverage.
Virginia expanded adult Medicaid dental benefits in 2021. On paper, 1.8 million Virginians can now see a dentist with their coverage. In practice, most can't find one who will see them. Virginia Public Dental Access Project exists to document that gap — locality by locality, procedure code by procedure code, year by year — and to use that documentation to push for policy that closes it.
Start here