Emergency Rooms and Dental Care

Posted on February 29, 2012 by townsend

• Emergency dental care up 16%; lack of insurance cited, By Guy Boulton, February 27, 2012, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Preventable dental conditions resulted in an estimated 890,000 emergency department visits nationally in 2009, a 16% increase from 2006, according to a report from the Pew Center on the States. The problem can be seen in Wisconsin and is a long-standing frustration for the Wisconsin Hospital Association. The association has estimated that 32,000 patients with dental problems, such as an infected tooth, are seen by hospital emergency departments each year. Many of the visits stem from the limited access to dental care for people who are uninsured or who are covered by state health programs. The fees paid to dentists by the state’s health programs, such as BadgerCare Plus, are the fifth-lowest in the country, according to a separate report released last year by the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign, a national effort to increase access to dental care for low-income children…”
• More Americans seek dental treatment at the ER; costs can be 10 times more than checkups, By Lindsey Tanner (AP), February 28, 2012, Chicago Tribune: “More Americans are turning to the emergency room for routine dental problems – a choice that often costs 10 times more than preventive care and offers far fewer treatment options than a dentist’s office, according to an analysis of government data and dental research. Most of those emergency visits involve trouble such as toothaches that could have been avoided with regular checkups but went untreated, in many cases because of a shortage of dentists, particularly those willing to treat Medicaid patients, the analysis said. The number of ER visits nationwide for dental problems increased 16 percent from 2006 to 2009, and the report released Tuesday by the Pew Center on the States suggests the trend is continuing…”