Dental Data Resources and Tools for Diverse Users

June 01, 2017

With the relationship between dental and overall health clearly established, stakeholders across the health services landscape are seeking information about the utilization and cost of dental care. FAIR Health is meeting their diverse needs with a range of resources:

• Consumers. Individual healthcare consumers are turning with greater frequency to FAIR Health’s consumer website (fairhealthconsumer.org in English; consumidor.fairhealth.org in Spanish) and mobile apps (FH® Cost Lookup and FH® CCSalud) to estimate the cost of dental care in their geographic areas. Many individuals typically are without dental coverage or receive dental care out of network; the lookup tool is especially useful for them. Consumers also can visit the site for our FH Health Insurance 101 original educational content. For example, the newly posted “Dental Coverage for Retirees” addresses the very limited dental care covered by Medicare and suggests where retirees can find dental coverage.
• Groups serving employees and members. Insurers, employers and others have been licensing private-labeled versions of our consumer site—including the cost lookup tool and content noted above—with their organization’s own look and feel, to help empower their employees and members to become more active participants in their medical and dental care. This includes making educated decisions when selecting plans, choosing whether to see in- or out-of-network dentists, managing benefits and making other key decisions.
• Researchers. The FAIR Health National Private Insurance Claims (FH NPIC®) data are available in data cuts customized to support a wide range of cutting-edge research analyses. A FAIR Health study completed in October 2016, which was based on the privately billed claims in our database, showed that claim lines related to oral cancer diagnoses rose 61 percent from 2011 to 2015, with the greatest increase occurring in throat and the second greatest in tongue cancer. The study also revealed that oral cancer claims occurred nearly three times as often in males as in females during the period studied. Data from the study were presented to the media for public consumption in an infographic.
• Insurers. Health plans are licensing our FH Dental Benchmarks module or custom cuts of our utilization and cost data for strategic decision making, from evaluating benefit design to reviewing network adequacy, building and maintaining fee schedules, understanding regional cost disparities and comparing treatment patterns across geographic areas.
• Dental professionals. Our online FH Fee Estimator® provides dentists and practice managers with easy, affordable access to charge data for CDT® codes sorted by geographic region. The data can help them review and design fee schedules, evaluate network participation, investigate practice expansion to new geographic areas, assess the revenue potential associated with the purchase or lease of new equipment, compare their own fees to regional market data and more.

To learn how FAIR Health’s dental claims data resources can meet your organization’s needs, contact us by e-mail at info@fairhealth.org or call us at 855-301-3247, Monday through Friday, 9 am to 6 pm ET.

^{The Code on Dental Procedures and Nomenclature is published in Current Dental Terminology (CDT), American Dental Association (ADA). All rights reserved.}