Sealant, implant and crown studies reveal treatment trends

Delta Dental’s size and focus on dental health provide us access to millions of dental claims collected in the course of doing business. In 2005 alone, our enterprise processed 30 million claims — representing more than 50 million dental services. We are able to mine this information to reveal trends in dental treatment and in oral health. We can also narrow our audits and reviews to a specific region or broaden them to all 15 states (plus the District of Columbia) that make up our enterprise.

Data mining is a vital tool in helping Delta Dental assess evidence based benefits. The information we receive helps us modify benefit design, which ultimately elevates the quality of dental health for all of our clients and enrollees. To that end, we recently conducted the following studies:

Sealants
Although it has been generally known that sealants are beneficial in children, recent industry studies offer long-term data showing that sealant-treated teeth require significantly fewer fillings in subsequent years. Our analysis also indicates that most sealants do not fail; when failures do occur, they usually happen within the first or second year of placement.

Knowing this, Delta Dental lowered its time limitation for sealant replacement from three to two years. We continue to encourage sealant placement by including the treatment as a covered benefit (for children) and educating enrollees about its usefulness.

Implants
Beginning in the mid-1990s, dental implants became a viable alternative to conventional bridges and dentures. Although implants are not covered in most dental plans, Delta Dental receives tens of thousands of claims that include implants, allowing us to study the trend and its implications. Preliminary findings reveal that:

• Implants are being used in treatments other than single tooth replacement such as for anchoring full and partial dentures.

• The time between the surgical placement of the implant and the fitting of a crown or other prosthesis on it varies from one day to more than 12 months. If dental implants are to be included in standard benefit plans, this variation will impact overall costs because more than one year’s annual maximum benefit might be tapped.

• The incidence of implants has increased significantly over the past five years, a trend which is certain to continue.

Delta Dental currently offers implants as a benefit through riders added to group contracts. We will continue our data research as part of the ongoing assessment of current and future benefit designs.