Denture Group Visits: A Model To Improve Access to Care and Reduce Treatment Period for Dentures

Abstract

Objective- To evaluate the efficiency of denture group visits program by delivering dentures in shorter number of days when compared to individual appointments.

Methods- Group denture visits model was developed and implemented at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) dental center. We evaluated the efficiency, i.e., reduced number of days for the overall treatment period, utilizing a retrospective chart review of the patients who received dentures over a three-year period. Descriptive statistics, the Mann-Whitney U test, and GLM regression were performed to analyze the results.

Results- Most of the patients had public insurance (79%), 55% were women, and the mean age of the sample was 63 years. The average number of days taken to deliver a denture was 32% less in the group visits compared to individual visits (p<0.0001). Number of patients who dropped off in the middle of the treatment was reduced from 17% in individual visits to 8% in group visits. The type of visit and type of denture were significant contributing factors relative to the number of days required for treatment.

Conclusion-Group visits are less utilized in dentistry; we have demonstrated their feasibility in dentistry. Denture group visits model was used to decrease the number of days required to treat patients with edentulism by 32% compared to individual visits; thereby, freeing appointment schedules, reduce waiting period for future patients and increase number of patients that can be treated. We demonstrated an innovative way to use group visits in clinical dentistry as an approach to increase access to care.