Study: Insurance status can affect compliance

A positive correlation exists between insurance status and patient acceptance of prescribed treatment, a new pilot study (Journal of Dental Hygiene, Winter 2010, Vol. 84:1, pp. 16-23) conducted in the Savannah, GA, area has found.

Researchers extracted data about patients' age, gender, insurance status, and a tally of accepted and rejected procedures from a private dental office database.

Among their findings:

• The acceptance rate of dental exams by both the insured and uninsured was greater than 80%.
• The insured population had a 90% acceptance rate for an oral prophylaxis procedure, compared to 74.6% for the uninsured population.
• For radiographic procedures, insured patients had an acceptance rate that was 8.3% higher than those who were uninsured.
• Crowns, bridges, and dentures showed less difference in acceptance rates.