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Dental care utilization: how saturated is the patient market?
1American Dental Association, Health Policy Resources Center, Chicago, Ill 60611, USA.
Background:
Dental care utilization is the percentage of the population who access dental services over a specified period. In this article, the authors report on the results of several dental care utilization studies.
Methods:
To date, dental utilization data have been gathered by large national studies via telephone interviews, face-to-face interviews or written surveys. In this article, the authors report on and compare dental care utilization rates provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Center for Health Statistics, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and the American Dental Association.
Results:
As captured by the various studies, the percentage of people who indicated they visited a dentist within the past year increased gradually between 1983 and 1997. The authors found that dental care utilization rates are higher among women than they are among men, and they decrease with age and increase with income and educational level.
Conclusions:
Although the available data vary, they suggest that more Americans are visiting a dentist. The demand for dental care is increasing overall, as well as across educational, racial and economic lines.
Practice Implications:
If, as recent studies suggest, approximately 75 percent of the population visits a dentist annually, there is only modest room for further expansion of dental care utilization. However, if dental care utilization rates are substantially lower as reported in older studies, then there is a greater potential for increased dental care utilization.