Recent Studies from University of California San Francisco (UCSF) Add New Data to Managed Care (Testing Dental Quality Measures Emergency Department Visits for Nontraumatic Dental Conditions and Subsequent Follow-up Dental Visits): Managed Care

2023 JUL 25 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Researchers detail new data in Managed Care. According to news reporting out of San Francisco, California, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “The goal of this study was to test the feasibility, reliability, and validity of the Dental Quality Alliance’s adult dental quality measures for system-level implementation for ambulatory care sensitive (ACS) emergency department (ED) visits for nontraumatic dental conditions (NTDCs) in adults and follow-up after ED visits for NTDCs in adults. Medicaid enrollment and claims data from Oregon and Iowa were used for measure testing.”

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), “Testing included validation of diagnosis codes in claims data through patient record reviews of ED visits and calculations of K statistic, sensitivity, and specificity. Adult Medicaid enrollees’ ACS NTDC ED visits ranged from 209 through 310 per 100,000 member-months. In both states, patients in the age category 25 through 34 years and non-Hispanic Black patients had the highest rates of ACS ED visits for NTDCs. Only one-third of all ED visits were associated with a follow-up dental visit within 30 days, decreasing to approximately one-fifth with a 7-day follow-up. The agreement between the claims data and patient records for identification of ACS ED visits for NTDCs was 93%, K statistic was 0.85, sensitivity was 92%, and specificity was 94%. Testing revealed the feasibility, reliability, and validity of 2 DQA quality measures. Most beneficiaries did not have a follow-up with a dentist within 30 days of an ED visit. Practical Implications.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Adoption of quality measures by state Medicaid programs and other integrated care systems will enable active tracking of beneficiaries with ED visits for NTDCs and develop strategies to connect them to dental homes.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Testing Dental Quality Measures Emergency Department Visits for Nontraumatic Dental Conditions and Subsequent Follow-up Dental Visits. The Journal of the American Dental Association, 2023;154(6):507-518. The 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 Enihomo Obadan-Udoh, University of California San Francisco (UCSF), School of Dentistry, Dept. of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences, Div Oral Epidemiol & Dent Publ Hlth, 707 Parnassus Ave, Box 1361, San Francisco, CA 94143, United States. Additional authors for this research include Jill Boylston Herndon, Richie Kohli, Garima Arora, Susan McKernan, Matthew Jura, Elizabeth Momany, Harjit Singh Sehgal, Alfa -Ibrahim Yansane, Elizabeth Mertz, Diptee Ojha and Craig Amundson.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adaj.2023.03.008. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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