Estimated impact of competing policy recommendations for age of first dental visit.

Objective: To compare levels of dental utilization and untreated dental decay among children aged 1 to 3 years that are likely to occur under 2 potential guidance policies: (1) pediatricians refer all toddlers to dentists for screening (consistent with American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry and the American Dental Association recommendations; DENT), and (2) pediatricians receive training in caries risk assessment, screen toddlers, and refer at-risk children to dentists (consistent with American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations; PED).

Methods: Using decision analysis, we estimated the impact of PED and DENT assuming alternately unlimited dental capacity for Medicaid-insured patients and fixed Medicaid dental capacity. Results With unlimited capacity, if DENT were implemented, then dental utilization is estimated to increase from 27% under the status quo to 65% and untreated decay to decrease from a mean of 0.60 surfaces to 0.52 surfaces per child. If PED were implemented, then dental utilization and untreated decay would decrease from status quo levels to an estimated 11% and 0.47 surfaces, respectively, assuming that diagnostic sensitivity and specificity both equaled 1; they would decrease to 13% and 0.53 surfaces, respectively, if sensitivity equaled 0.76 and specificity equaled 0.95. With fixed capacity, under DENT, untreated decay is estimated to increase to 0.63 surfaces because low-risk private-pay patients would crowd out at-risk Medicaid-insured children, whereas under PED, untreated decay would still be less than under the status quo.

Conclusions: Implementing PED will decrease untreated decay under most plausible scenarios, whereas switching to DENT will increase the burden of disease if Medicaid dental capacity is limited.