Comparison of orthodontic treatment outcomes in educational and private practice settings

An accredited graduate orthodontic program provides advanced specialty education to meet standards of care mandated by the ADA, including both didactic and clinical components with defined outcome measures. To quantify these measures, the quality of care provided by graduate orthodontic students was compared to that of orthodontists in private practice. The quality of care was studied in two different delivery settings in the Columbus, Ohio, area-private practice orthodontists (PPO) and the OSU graduate orthodontic clinic (GOC). The Peer Assessment Rating (PAR) Occlusal Index was used as a measure of malocclusion severity and post-treatment occlusal outcome. Quality of care was measured using post-treatment PAR, percent PAR reduction, and treatment duration. At baseline, no differences were seen in the gender and pre-PAR scores of patients treated by the PPO and GOC, but statistically significant differences were seen in patients' pre-treatment age, race, and starting dentition. When the post-treatment occlusal results were compared, no statistically significant differences were seen in post-PAR scores and percent PAR reduction between the PPO and GOC. A statistically significant difference was seen in treatment duration (p = 0.002), which was longer in the PPO even after controlling for confounding factors such as pre-treatment age, gender, race, starting dentition, and treatment stages. Our conclusion is that there was no statistically significant difference in the occlusal outcome between the PPO and GOC, but there was a significant difference in the treatment duration.