The relationship between preventive dental care and overall medical expenditures.

ABSTRACT:

Objectives

To examine the relationship between preventive dental visits (PDVs) and medical expenditures while mitigating bias from unobserved confounding factors.

Study design

Retrospective data analysis of Indiana Medicaid enrollment and claims data (2015-2018) and the Area Health Resources Files.

Methods

An instrumental variable (IV) approach was used to estimate the relationship between PDVs and medical and pharmacy expenditures among Medicaid enrollees. The instrument was defined as the number of adult enrollees with at least 1 nonpreventive dental claim per total Medicaid enrollees within a Census tract per year.

Results

In naive analyses, enrollees had on average greater medical expenditures if they had a prior-year PDV (β = $397.21; 95% CI, $184.23-$610.

SUBMITTER: Taylor HL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11302381 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature