How does the dental benefits act encourage Australian families to seek and utilise oral health services?

Peivand Bastani; Reyhane Izadi; Nithin Manchery; Diep Ha; Hanny Calache; Ajesh George; Loc Do

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0277152

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionAugust 16, 2022
4 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Rong Zhu, Editor PONE-D-22-22909HOW DOES THE DENTAL BENEFITS ACT ENCOURAGE AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES TO SEEK AND UTILISE ORAL HEALTH SERVICES?PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Bastani, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 18 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. 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Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: No ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Dear Authors, I found this paper interesting to read. A major influence that was not explored at all is the influence/implication of the Australian Dental Association in shaping the rules and the service codes. This is a critical area of concern, and has been an exception to oral health. In many other medical health fields, they are developed by the Department of Health's delegate authority, the Medical Services Advisory Committee, in consultation with stakeholders. Whilst contentious, the paper should explore in more detail the role of the Australian Dental Association with the Dental Benefits Act 2008, and how this influence may be pervasive in achieving the public health goals to ensure universal access to affordable oral health care. I have provided comments throughout the paper. At times, content was hard too read, and requires extensive grammar editing and sentencing corrections. Kind regards, Peer-reviewer ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? 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Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: PONE-D-22-22909 PR.pdf https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277152.r001
Revision 1
17 Oct 2022 Author Response Dear editor Thank you so much for considering the article for peer review at PLOS One journal. The followings are line by line responses to the respected reviewers’ comments as well as the mentioned corrections in track change in the manuscript’s body: Background Page 9 1- The Commonwealth does not provide services; they fund the State and Territories to provide them. We have omitted any mention of “Commonwealth” in the manuscript as per the reviewer’s comment. 2- Cost-effective is incorrect, it is effectiveness. No studies have evaluated if they were cost-effective because there are no existing outcomes to make this comparison. We have corrected “cost-effective” to “effectiveness” in the manuscript according to the reviewer’s comment. 3- “Due to indexation” This additional point has been mentioned and clarified the manuscript. 4- There are two different issues here that needs to be separated. Utilisation refers to access, whereas the prevalence of moderate stages of dental caries based on the recent child oral health survey is irrelevant to the CDBS because this program only covers a fraction of the child population. Please address Thank you for pointing this out. We have revised this section to focus only on the utilisation of the CDBS program to improve clarity. 5- Please reference more recent figures for utilisation of the CDBS, from the Fourth Review of the Dental Benefits Act 2008 or is this figure to the MTDP? Again, this paragraph needs clarity. I note the reference used is the child oral health survey, which does not tell us if children use the CDBS or MTDP. As suggested, we have included a more recent reference for the utilisation of the CDBS and the concerns of MTDP program. 6- 'Given the challenges for increasing the utilisation of the CDBS... etc...' This forms the basis of this paper. Thank you for this suggestion. We have incorporated this feedback and improved clarity of this section. 7- Add reference A Reference has been added. Page 10 8- Sentences appear incomplete? I suspect outcome on utilisation, please clarify. We have clarified the sentence. Methods Page 10 9- Reference year required We have included all reference years. 10- 2008 We have corrected this to “ACT 2008” 11- Who did this? Please confirm if an author or someone else and include in Acknowledgments. We have clarified that an expert outside the research team acted as the qualitative research expert and have included further details in the acknowledgement section 12- Some edition and strikethrough texts are mentioned in the body These edits have been undertaken Results 13- Capital the first letter of table and figures These edits have been undertaken 14- Confirm if this refers to State and Territory governments (Page 6) Yes, we have confirmed this Discussion 15- Torres Strait Islander People The word “People” has been added 16- Page 8, Comma, required This has been addressed 17- Page 8, Break up concepts, sentence too long. Thank you for this feedback. We have paraphrased the paragraph. 18- Page 8, Again, what does this mean in terms of outcome, cost-effective needs a comparator for improving an outcome unless you are simply trying to save costs. We have replaced the term ‘cost-effective’ with ‘effective’ 19- As per above, consider alignment these concepts with the WHO Global Oral Health Action Plan, using the term essential dental services package, We have used the term “essential dental services package” as suggested by the reviewer 20- I found this paper interesting to read. A major influence that was not explored at all is the influence/implication of the Australian Dental Association in shaping the rules and the service codes. This is a critical area of concern and has been an exception to oral health. In many other medical health fields, they are developed by the Department of Health's delegate authority, the Medical Services Advisory Committee, in consultation with stakeholders. Whilst contentious, the paper should explore in more detail the role of the Australian Dental Association with the Dental Benefits Act 2008, and how this influence may be pervasive in achieving the public health goals to ensure universal access to affordable oral health care. Thank you for highlighting this important point. We have included additional points around the potential role of the Australian Dental Association in this area as one of the key stakeholders. 21- At times, content was hard to read, and requires extensive grammar editing and sentencing corrections. We have reviewed the whole manuscript to address grammatical errors and improve clarity Abbreviations 22- Organization The abbreviation for WHO has been corrected. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Responce to reviewers.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277152.r002
21 Oct 2022 Decision Letter - Rong Zhu, Editor HOW DOES THE DENTAL BENEFITS ACT ENCOURAGE AUSTRALIAN FAMILIES TO SEEK AND UTILISE ORAL HEALTH SERVICES? PONE-D-22-22909R1 Dear Dr. Bastani, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Rong Zhu, Ph.D. Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277152.r003
Formally Accepted
15 Nov 2022 Acceptance Letter - Rong Zhu, Editor PONE-D-22-22909R1 How does the dental benefits act encourage Australian families to seek and utilise oral health services? Dear Dr. Bastani: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Rong Zhu Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0277152.r004

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