A September 2020 report from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) revealed that close to 60 million Americans lived in dental care shortage areas. These areas, known as a Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA) by the HRSA, are geographic areas, population groups, or facilities where access to dental care services is substandard because of a lack of dentists and dental auxiliaries (any non-dentist staff employed by the dentist to assist in the operation of the practice). With respect to dental care, HRSA designation criteria is based upon the number of people living within the HPSA relative to the number of dental care providers that service the area. Although the population-to-provider ratio needed to qualify for designation as a dental care shortage area varies by HPSA type (geographic, population or facility), all HPSAs with a dental care shortage designation have a population-to-provider ratio that meets or exceeds certain limits set by federal regulations. Areas receiving a dental care shortage designation by the HRSA are eligible to participate in federal programs aimed at attracting more dental care providers to work with these communities. As of September 2020, nearly 6,500 areas or settings had been designated as dental care shortage areas by the HRSA. The HRSA estimates that these HPSAs would need about 10,700 additional dental care providers to eliminate all such designations.
HPSAs in the five-state Rocky Mountain region account for about 4.1% of the U.S. population who live in dental care shortage areas and about 3.1% of the national shortage of dental care providers. The HRSA estimates that HPSAs in the Rocky Mountain region would need more than 330 additional dental care providers in order to eliminate the dental care shortage in the region. Here is a summary look at the dental care shortage in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States:
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| The Dental Care Shortage in the Rocky Mountain Region |
| State | (1) HPSAs | (2) Population | (3) Shortage |
| CO | 100 | 848.2 | 137 |
| ID | 94 | 493.8 | 58 |
| MT | 123 | 351.2 | 61 |
| UT | 62 | 703.5 | 73 |
| WY | 31 | 49.7 | 5 |
| Region | 410 | 2,446.4 | 334 |
| U.S. | 6,487 | 59,941.1 | 10,716 |
