The impact of underutilization of preventive dental care by adult Medicaid participants

OBJECTIVE: To ascertain the financial impact associated with the underutilization of preventive dental care for adults enrolled in Medicaid. METHODS: We used adult claims data for patients aged 21–64 in the IBM Watson Marketscan Medicaid database. Enrollees were included if they had at least one dental claim in 2019 and were continuously enrolled between 2014 and 2019. We then evaluated the costs of their dental care in 2019, based on the number of years of preventive dental care they received between 2014 and 2018. We also assessed Emergency Department (ED) utilization for dental conditions, oral surgeries, and dental‐related opioid prescriptions. RESULTS: The average Medicaid enrollee with five continuous years of preventive care prior to 2019 experienced 43% lower costs than an individual who received no preventive dental care at all. Most of the savings were a result of fewer oral surgeries. A Medicaid enrollee with no preventive dental visits was eight times more likely to have an ED visit for a nontraumatic dental condition (NTDC), seven times more likely to have oral surgery and six times more likely to receive a dental‐related opioid prescription compared to those who had a dental prevention visit every year in the 5‐year lookback period. CONCLUSIONS: Regular preventive dental care in the lookback period was associated with significant savings in overall dental care costs when compared to dental care costs for those individuals who received no or few preventive visits. Prior preventive dental care was also associated with lower rates of ED‐NTDC utilization, oral surgery, and dental‐related opioid prescriptions.