The healthcare systems and provision of oral healthcare in European Union member states. Part 10: comparison of systems and with the United Kingdom.

Abstract

Since 2015, a series of papers which describe the systems for the provision of health and oral healthcare in nine European Union (EU) countries (France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Romania, Spain and Sweden) have been published in this journal. This tenth and final paper in the series compares aspects of the systems for each country, with each other and with that in the United Kingdom (UK). The topics which have been covered are the organisation and funding of oral healthcare, national populations and oral healthcare workforce, education of dentists, uptake of oral healthcare, expenditure on oral healthcare and oral epidemiology. The comparison shows that there are wide differences between the care provision systems between the individual countries. In all of them, oral healthcare continues to operate outside the mainstream healthcare systems. In particular, the proportion of costs paid for them from public funds, raised through taxation or through compulsory social insurances, and those paid for by individual patients varies greatly. No comparable data exist on quality of care.