Estimation of procedure times in a publicly funded dental programme

For the purposes of planning and evaluation, knowing the time-costs associated with each dental procedure carried out in a publicly funded dental programme is very helpful. This knowledge, along with the expected or known benefits, also allows researchers to assess the efficacy of a dental procedure. However, only a few estimates of dental procedure times exist in the literature, and most of these focus on restorative treatments. The North York Public Health Department operates a school-based public dental programme, where each dental procedure carried out by a dentist or hygienist is entered into a dental management information system database, along with the date of the procedure and the hours worked by the provider on that date. Using these data and multiple regression analyses it was possible to estimate the average time required to carry out the most common procedures in North York's dental programme. These estimates were found to be similar to estimates published in the dental literature and very similar to estimates of the Ontario Dental Association. Thus, this method of calculating procedure times appears valid and may be very useful to managers of public dental programmes and public dental health researchers.