Managing Diabetes Costs with Oral Health
This interactive tool from CareQuest Institute allows integrated care settings, such as Federally Qualified Health Centers, to input data and simulate potential cost savings from covering periodontal treatment — specifically scaling and root planing — for diabetes patients. The model demonstrates that reimbursement for scaling and root planing has the potential to reduce medical encounters and increase revenue for health centers.
Andrea Clark, report author and director, health care economics, health transformation at CareQuest Institute, writes:
The incentive model proposed in this paper provides an example of a simple innovation to encourage utilization, improve outcomes, and even reduce costs.
Today, only about half of state Medicaid programs cover scaling and root planing. And when it is covered, the Medicaid reimbursement rate is much less than the practice cost — factors that create a financial incentive against providing these services.
You may also be interested in:
- Periodontal Treatment Associated with Decreased Diabetes-Related Costs, an article in The Journal of the American Dental Association that demonstrates cost savings up to 14% for patients with diabetes who received periodontal treatment.
- Making Connections: How a Community Clinic Is Integrating Dental and Overall Care, a blog post about how a community health center uses an integration coordinator to connect patients with diabetes to oral health care.
- Another Billion Reasons for a Medicare Dental Benefit, a report finding that including periodontal treatment in Medicare can save up to $14.5 billion annually for patients with diabetes.
- Medicaid Adult Dental Coverage Checker, an interactive tool that shows which state Medicaid programs cover periodontal treatment, and other dental services.
