COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ORAL HEALTH SYSTEMS IN EUROPE

The European health systems have developed starting from two different models, namely the Beveridge model and Bismark model, respectively, each of them having different funding and organization. At its turn, the oral health system, as an integrating part of the national system, shows some characteristics and particularities favorable or not to the patients and professionals in this field. The aim of this paper is to compare the oral health system of different European countries by means of the oral health indicators (DMFT at 12-year-olds, percentage of totally edentate people) and economic indicators (GDP percentage for health, dentists' annual average wages, and oral health expenses per inhabitant). Moreover, the study lays focus on the distribution of professionals in the selected European countries while comparing the official statistic data in terms of density of dentists, and the ratio between the number of medical technicians and assistants and the number of physicians. The conclusion of the study shows that Romania occupies the last place in terms of GDP funding (0.3 %vs. 0.85% in Germany) and registers the highest value for DMFT index at 12-year-olds (2.4 versus 0.7 in Sweden and the Great Britain). Despite all that, in Romania, the profession of a dentist is considered as sufficiently attractive, the proof being the indicator showing specialists' density for 100,000 inhabitants, namely 83.5 in Romania, a value that is close to the European Union mean -88/100,000 inhabitants.