Locking out prevention: Dental care in the midst of a pandemic

Emergencies, such as natural and manmade disasters, can present an opportunity or be a detriment to preventive healthcare. While stay-at-home orders which some states implemented to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 are known to reduce acute and routine care, little is known about missed preventive care. Dental care, unlike other forms of preventive care - such as pediatric vaccines and well-visits, is simpler to analyze as it is not practicable with telehealth. Using weekly foot traffic data by SafeGraph from January 2018 to June 2020, we examine the effect of stay-at-home orders on visits to dental offices, finding a 15.4% decline after March 2020 for states with stay-at-home orders. Surprisingly, we find that states which allowed dental care during the stay-at-home period experienced a further 7.4% decline in visits. Using Michigan Medicaid dental claims for children we find that the decline of 0.25 claims per month is driven primarily by fewer diagnostic and preventive care visits. Though some preventive visits were rescheduled, we estimate only 58% of visits missed in March and April 2020 were made up by the end of the year. These estimates quantify the short-term declines in preventive dental care, suggesting similar declines in other preventive care.