13 - Using Oregon ESSENCE to track Emergency Department usage for nontraumatic dental conditions.

Abstract:

Objective: This poster presentation will describe the methods used and results obtained from using Oregon ESSENCE (Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-Based Epidemics), a dataset geared toward monitoring public health emergencies, to provide population-based public health surveillance of Emergency Department (ED) usage for non-traumatic dental conditions. Previously published studies of ED usage for dental visits in Oregon have focused on using Medicaid claims data, extracts from the All Payer All Claims (APAC) dataset, or similar claims-based datasets. A key benefit of using ESSENCE Data is that includes narrative descriptions of chief complaint for each record.

Methods: Data from 2018 through mid-2022 from Oregon hospital Emergency Departments and Urgent Care centers were analyzed. Visits were categorized as for Non-Traumatic Dental Conditions (NTDC) if the discharge diagnosis contained ICD-10 diagnosis codes relating to dental disease. Records were analyzed to determine if the chief complaint included mention of dental disease or dental pain and if such complaints correlated to a primary NTDC diagnosis. Additionally, data was analyzed using demographic information to assess for disparities in need for emergency dental care.
Results suggest that ED usage for dental conditions has continued to trend downward in recent years. However, rates of ED usage for dental conditions remains high, especially for populations that often do not have dental insurance, including young adults and racial minorities. In conclusion, ESSENCE is a reliable and robust dataset for use in investigating the rate of Emergency Department utilization for Non-Traumatic Dental Conditions at a population level.

Source of Funding: None