Summary

Findings demonstrate that the addition of the CDHC has aided in improving access to dental care among preschool children in the community through patient navigation and coordination of care. Over a ten month period, 5831 children were served in the elementary schools for a total of 1,023 school visits over 69 days. Four hundred one of those 583 ¹ children went on to receive comprehensive dental care in the dental clinic; 234 of those had not been seen at the dental clinic prior to being seen at school. Typically, these children came to the clinic 90 ² days after screening. The total care value of services provided to the children seen in the elementary schools and brought into the dental clinic through elementary school outreach was $602,862. Outreach services alone amounted to $373,880 of care, while $228,982 of care was provided at the dental clinic during that ten-month period.

Elementary School Outreach Events

Overall, there were differences in the types of services provided to these children at the school compared to services they received at the dental clinic. At school, the majority care provided was preventive.

On average, children had 2 visits, 7 dental procedures (dental services) per visit, and received $641 of total care, or $365 of care per visit.

Services provided. 7,711 dental procedures were performed in school.

Dental Care in the Dental Clinic

On average, children had 2 visits, 3 dental procedures (dental services) per visit, and received $577 of total care, or $256 of care per visit.

Services provided. 3,618 dental procedures were performed in the dental clinic.

For elementary school children who made an appointment at the dental clinic, the rate of missed appointments was 16% (of appointments made); the rate of cancelled appointments was 3.5%.

New Children ⁵ prior to their dental visit at school and went on to receive comprehensive care at the dental clinic. These children came to the dental clinic approximately 90 days after screening at the school (mean=93.2,). Over one-third (38.4%) of these children visited the clinic within two months of their screening at school (median=90.0).

¹ This is the number of children at outreach who received care designated by ADA CDT service codes. Children who refused care or were did not receive care for other reasons are not included in this analysis.

² Median is reported due to the skewed distribution of number of days between school visit and dental clinic visit. The mean was about 93 days.

³ The median value is the most representative statistic throughout this report given the influence of extreme outliers.

⁴ NOTE: Interpret any frequencies of less than 30 with caution as they may not be statistically reliable.

⁵ For the purposes of this report, a “new patient” is defined as a child who did not have record of a dental appointment in the dental clinic prior to receiving dental services at the elementary school; this definition is based on the time period from August 2010 to March 2012 for which appointment data was collected.