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The Bell BriefFrom Dr. Jennifer Bell, DDS
MEDIUMResearchTier 1

Dentition status, dental care visits, and incremental expenditures in US adults, 2016-2018

SourceJournal of the American Dental Association (JADA)Tier 1Peer-Reviewed Research

Originally at sciencedirect.com

Summary & scoring by The Bell Brief (Dr. Jennifer Bell) using the Drill-Down Protocol (Drill-Down Score) — not the original publisher.

Why it matters for dental

This peer-reviewed JADA analysis quantifies how dentition status drives dental-visit frequency and out-of-pocket costs in U.S. adults, giving practice owners and DSOs data to forecast demand, set staffing levels, and target preventive programs for high-cost cohorts.

Key points

  • Study period 2016–2018, using nationally representative Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data covering ~75 million U.S. adults with complete dentition vs. partial or full edentulism.
  • Adults with partial tooth loss averaged 1.8 dental visits per year and $625 incremental annual expenditures; fully edentulous adults averaged 0.4 visits and $210, primarily for prosthodontic maintenance.
  • Significant geographic and payer variation: Medicaid expansion states showed 11 % higher visit rates among low-income adults with tooth loss compared with non-expansion states.
  • Authors recommend risk-stratified recall intervals and targeted outreach to partial-edentulous adults to reduce emergency-driven costs and improve practice revenue predictability.

Who should care

OwnerDSOAcademia

Read the original on Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA)

Full reporting and any paywall content live on sciencedirect.com. We summarize and score; we do not republish.

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