Data on Managed Care Reported by Researchers at American Dental Association (Early association of expanded Medicare dental benefits to dentist billing in Medicare): Managed Care

2026 FEB 17 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- New research on Managed Care is the subject of a report. According to news reporting from Chicago, Illinois, by NewsRx journalists, research stated, “Although Medicare is barred from covering most oral health care, policies enacted by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have expanded coverage of dental procedures for Medicare beneficiaries receiving certain medical treatments and made it easier for dentists to submit claims electronically. The authors extracted monthly counts of the number of Medicare-billing dentists from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services ‘Doctors and Clinicians’ files from January 2021 through December 2024.”

The news correspondents obtained a quote from the research from American Dental Association, “Considering the implementation dates of the reforms, we estimated a single-group interrupted time-series analysis separately for all dentists, oral surgeon dentists, and non-oral surgeon dentists to measure any association of the reforms with dental care provider participation in Medicare. After the Medicare dental benefit expansions, the preexisting downward trend in the number of Medicare-billing oral surgeons continued, although the transition to electronic claim forms appeared to be associated with a reverse in this decline. Among non-oral surgeon dentists, after the first dental benefit expansion, the monthly increase in the number of billing dental care providers accelerated 0.8% (95% CI, 0.47% to 1.12%). Despite new opportunities for Medicare beneficiaries to access oral health care, there have not been marked increases in the number of dentists billing Medicare, a trend largely associated with oral surgeons. Dentists may remain hesitant to participate in Medicare or are unaware of the new policies.”

According to the news reporters, the research concluded: “The authors lacked access to claims volume or patient outcome data and these elements will be needed in future research to further assess the association of Medicare dental reforms on patients.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Early association of expanded Medicare dental benefits to dentist billing in Medicare. Journal of the American Dental Association, 2026. Journal of the American Dental Association can be contacted at: Amer Dental Assoc, 211 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611, USA.

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting Kamyar Nasseh, Health Policy Institute, American Dental Association, Chicago, IL. Additional authors for this research include Deesha Bhaumik, Greg Saldutte, Michael L. Barnett and Lisa Simon.

Publisher contact information for the Journal of the American Dental Association is: Amer Dental Assoc, 211 E Chicago Ave, Chicago, IL 60611, USA.

(Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.)