Adolescent Dental Care Utilization: A Big Data Report

Background: This report aims to examine trends in dental care utilization from 2013 – 2018 among Medicaid-enrolled and commercial-insured adolescents.

Methods: The CareQuest institute for oral health used the 2013 – 2018 administrative dental claims from the IBM Watson MarketScan Medicaid and Commercial Databases to build the study cohort. The total number of Medicaid-enrolled adolescents included in the data was over 1 million (N = 1,228,279 – 1,704,992) and the total number of commercial-insured youth was just under 1 million (N = 654,220 – 874,083). Adolescent data were divided into two groups based on age: 10 – 14 years and 15 – 19 years. Chi-square, proportion test, and regression models were used to examine the dental utilization trends among adolescents over time.

Results: Overall dental care utilization among Medicaid-enrolled adolescents remained stable between 2013 – 2018. Commercially insured adolescents have higher dental care utilization than Medicaid-enrolled adolescents. The most recent findings from 2018 show a significant gender and racial difference among both age groups and dental service utilization. Females are more likely than males to utilize dental care in both Medicaid-enrolled and commercial-insured adolescents. Hispanic adolescents were 65% more likely to utilize dental services compared to White adolescents. African-American adolescents were 13% less likely to utilize any dental services compared to White adolescents.

Conclusion: Despite improvements in Medicaid and commercial insurance coverage, significant disparities still exist in the use of dental care. Racial/ethnic and gender disparities in adolescent dental care utilization have narrowed over the past decade but do still persist.