Does Preventive Care Reduce Severe Pediatric Dental Caries?

Details

• Journal Article:
  Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD)
• Personal Author:
  Lee, Helen H. ; Faundez, Luis ; Nasseh, Kamyar ; LoSasso, Anthony T.
• Description:
  Introduction ; Tertiary oral health services (caries-related surgery, sedation, and emergency department visits) represent high-cost and ineffective ways to improve a child’s oral health. We measured the impact of increased Texas Medicaid reimbursements for preventive dental care on use of tertiary oral health services. ; Methods ; We used difference-in-differences models to compare the effect of a policy change among children (≤9 y) enrolled in Medicaid in Texas and Florida. Linear regression models estimated 4 outcomes: preventive care dental visit, dental sedation, emergency department use, and surgical event. ; Results ; Increased preventive care visits led to increased sedation visits (1.7 percentage points, P < .001) and decreased emergency department visits (0.3 percentage points, P < .001) for children aged 9 years or younger. We saw no significant change in dental surgical rates associated with increased preventive dental care reimbursements. ; Conclusion ; Increased access to preventive dentistry was not associated with improved long-term oral health of Medicaid-enrolled children. Policies that aim to improve the oral health of children may increase the effectiveness of preventive dentistry by also targeting other social determinants of oral health.
• Subjects:
  • Original Research
• Source:
  Prev Chronic Dis. 2020; 17
• ISSN:
  1545-1151
• Pubmed ID:
  33119483
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC7665577
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Volume:
  17
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/97438/cdc_97438_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 388.84 KB]
• Collection(s):
  Preventing Chronic Disease
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:13a5971fe0f12bb5933d1554a62034455b33bf70d2f4cc05159b1b9e87bed258941675d1988187111ce5a10f7a326d14aad676547f919a7631112b5f1cf4a04c