By Matt Zapotosky
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 13, 2008

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and state health officials will announce today the creation of a dental office on wheels to serve poor children in Prince George's County, an effort named for a 12-year-old county child who died last year because he lacked access to dental care.

The mobile office, essentially a van equipped with two dental chairs, will be named the Deamonte Driver Dental Project. Deamonte, whose family did not have insurance, died after infection from a tooth abscess spread to his brain. An $80 tooth extraction might have saved his life.

"The death of Deamonte Driver had a profound impact on many of us," said John M. Colmers, Maryland's secretary of health and mental hygiene. "I think for those of us in the public policy arena, it caused us to reexamine what we've been doing."

The county Health Department received $288,000 in state money to fund the van, which will visit schools in an effort to prevent conditions like Deamonte's from going undetected, Colmers said. It also will publicize the need for children to receive dental care, the importance of which is often overlooked, he said.

Deamonte's death focused public attention on the dental health of Maryland children covered by Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor. Less than a third of those children saw a dentist last year, state officials said, in part because many dentists do not accept Medicaid patients.

O'Malley (D) devoted $14 million in his fiscal 2009 budget to improve compensation for dentists who take Medicaid patients, bumping fees for a basic treatment to prevent tooth decay, for example, from $9 to $33.

O'Malley also set aside $2 million for public health initiatives such as the mobile dental office. "We're hoping that we're going to do a lot better than 1 in 3" children on Medicaid seeing a dentist, said Harry Goodman, director of the state Office of Oral Health.