Can providing a fixed amount of money for dental care improve dental care for young people?

Not Applicable

Conditions: Oral health care
Oral Health

Registration Number: ISRCTN16141603

Lead Sponsor: Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre

Brief Summary: Not available

Detailed Description: Not available

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: Ongoing

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 16548

Inclusion Criteria

Current inclusion criteria as of 17/06/2024:

1. Dental practices which regularly enrol and treat persons aged up until 18 years old.
2. Dental practices which use clinical management software that offers de-identified data export (in order to obtain information on caries risk)
3. Patients aged up until 18 years old.

_____

Previous inclusion criteria:

1. Dental practices which regularly enrol and treat persons aged 4-18 years
2. Dental practices which use clinical management software that offers de-identified data export (in order to obtain information on caries risk)
3. Patients aged 4-18 years

Exclusion Criteria

1. Dental practices which treat less than yearly 200 persons aged 4-18 years (to ensure sufficient clinical expertise and reaching the overall sample size)
2. Patients with disabilities
3. No informed consent.

Study & Design

Study Type: Interventional

Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Current primary outcome measure as of 17/06/2024: <br><br>Changes in utilization of oral health care according to routine data from health insurers and dental practice software after 6, 12, 24 and 36 months after study onset.<br><br>_____<br><br>Previous primary outcome measure:<br><br>The change in volume of restorative dental care, volume of preventive dental care, volume of restorative treatments due to caries, mean caries risk and access to care for patients with low SES will be measured using routine dental electronic health record (EHR) data as delivered by the participating health care insurance companies and dental software provider after 3, 6, 12, 24, 36 and 48 months after study onset.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Process evaluation:<br>The feasibility to implement the new provider payment model, the acceptability for providers, insurers and patients and the initiated changes in practice organisation and care delivery (e.g. task delegation) will be evaluated in the beginning of the study via an online survey and, if needed, at the middle/end of the study via semi-structured interviews with relevant stakeholders such as patients/parents, dental professionals and health insurers.<br> <br>Economic evaluation:<br>The change in treatment costs and cost-effectiveness (with focus on differences in costs vs. differences in the amount of caries-related treatments between the intervention and control groups) as a result of the new provider payment model will be analysed before and after implementation of the intervention.<br>