Medi-Cal/Denti-Cal

Andrew Zufall, DMD, one of 34 California dentists who in March was awarded a CalHealthCares Loan Repayment award, often tells…

Changes are coming to the Medi-Cal Dental Program in Sacramento County. Dentists must be enrolled as a provider in Medi-Cal Dental fee-for-service to continue seeing any existing patients who leave their DMC plan and enroll in Medi-Cal Dental FFS. 

Important new and ongoing services for Medi-Cal Dental patients include language translation and free transportation to and from their appointments. Learn about all the services available, as well as assistance and training to help dentists establish and provide care for Medi-Cal Dental patients. 

The state of California is reviewing Medi-Cal eligibility. Dentists can share outreach materials with their Medi-Cal patients to help ensure they receive important information and updates about their coverage. 

The dental initiatives of California’s transformative Medi-Cal proposal, CalAIM, have added to the significant gains made by the Medi-Cal Dental Program, which is designed to serve more than 14.7 million eligible Californians. Read about six major changes that are working for dentists and patients.

Starting Oct. 31, dental providers must electronically submit Medi-Cal enrollment applications and required documentation through the online portal PAVE. Dentists can attend upcoming webinars to learn how to use the portal.

The California 2022-23 state budget signed by Gov. Newsom includes all of CDA’s priority asks with major investments in health care workforce development and $50 million to build and expand facilities and infrastructure to provide care for dental patients with special health care needs.

The California Department of Health Care Services plans to implement the Provider Application and Validation for Enrollment portal to simplify and accelerate Medi-Cal enrollment processes for dental providers no later than November 2022.

The California Legislature approved a state budget for the 2021-22 fiscal year that upholds the will of the voters when they passed the Proposition 56 tobacco tax in 2016. The budget makes significant investments in Medi-Cal Dental improvements, workforce development and coronavirus relief. 

Dental providers who receive incentive payments through the Medi-Cal Dental Transformation Initiative can continue participation for one more year. The five-year pilot program was set to expire at the end of 2020, but due to the pandemic the DHCS requested the extension from the federal government.

The state Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom reached an agreement yesterday on a balanced state budget for 2020-21 fiscal year that preserves critical safety net health care funding in the Medi-Cal dental (Denti-Cal) program.

Now that Gov. Newsom has eased the statewide stay-at-home order and dentists are beginning to return to practice, CDA's Grassroots Advocacy Days have resumed. In the last weeks, dentists from four component dental societies met with their local legislators or legislative staff through Zoom, the videoconferencing platform.