A measure of agreement between clinicians and a computer-based decision support system for planning dental treatment

This study was conducted to estimate agreement and explain differences between treatment decisions and associated fees recommended by dentists and by a computer-based decision-support program (TxDENT 2.0). The treatment fees associated with forty-eight clinical records of patients attending a dental school clinic provided a measure of correlation and agreement between treatments recommended by TxDENT and by clinical instructors with students. The average difference between the two methods of forecasting fees was $466, and a regression line (y=0.43x+407) with an r-value of 0.54 indicated the strength of the relationship. The differences between methods increased as the cost of treatment increased, due largely to disagreements about the need to restore or replace weak or missing teeth. There is reasonable agreement between TxDENT and the collaborative treatment plans of clinical instructors with their students, which suggests that this computer-based decision-support system for screening patients in a standardized way could be a helpful predictor of treatment provided in a dental school clinic.