Statewide participation
26.9%
of Virginia dentists treated at least one Medicaid patient in FY2022.
DMAS Access Report, Nov 2022 (p. 3)
Virginia Medicaid covers over 2 million residents, but adult dental access lags far behind expectations. This dashboard maps where the gaps are — the first in a series of public-interest research projects from Virginia Public Dental Access Project.
Access pressure
1,014 : 1
Medicaid members per participating dentist statewide, August 2022.
DMAS Access Report, Nov 2022 (Figure 4)
Dental provider shortage by locality
Federal Dental Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) score for all 95 counties and 38 independent cities — 112 of Virginia's 133 localities are designated. Green is a lower shortage score, red is a more severe shortage. Click a locality for details. HRSA BCD HPSA, 2026
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026Not designated
Lower is better. Higher scores mean greater shortage.
Medicaid reimbursement vs. peer states
Each state's Medicaid rate as a percentage of Minnesota's (the high benchmark). VA averages 87% of MN across these procedures — but the gap is widest on preventive/diagnostic care (cleanings, evaluations, X-rays) and narrowest on restorative/surgical care. Raw dollar amounts in the tooltip.
Provider participation over time
Dentists participating in Smiles For Children, statewide, by state fiscal year.
DMAS Access Report, 2022 (FY2010–FY2022 published for even years; FY2005 = early 2005)No count has been published since FY2022.
About
About this work
Virginia Public Dental Access Project is an independent Virginia public oral health access initiative. We publish public-interest research that documents where Medicaid dental coverage isn't reaching people — and we use that research to push for policy change.
Over 2 million Virginians are covered by Medicaid. Their dental benefit is called Cardinal Care Smiles (formerly Smiles For Children), and DentaQuest runs it for the state. Children through age 20 have been covered since 2005, pregnant members since 2015, and adults have had full dental coverage since July 1, 2021.
Unlike the rest of Medicaid, dental isn't handed to private health plans. The state pays dentists directly, at prices it sets itself — so what Virginia pays dentists is a budget decision, not a regulatory one.
Coverage grew on paper; access did not keep up. In 2022, roughly 73% of Virginia dentists treated zero Medicaid patients — the most recent public measure, taken before both rate increases.
The shortage is geographic as well as financial. 84% of Virginia's 133 localities — 112 of them — carry a federal Dental Health Professional Shortage Area designation. Coverage you can't use is paper coverage.
This dashboard is the first of three tools Virginia Public Dental Access Project is publishing — alongside a community-verified provider directory and a national Medicaid dental policy tracker — to surface that gap and the conditions that produce it.