Community Dental Health

cover art

Cover Date:
September 2013
Print ISSN:
0265 539X
Vol:
30
Issue:
3

Longitudinal register study of attendance frequencies in public and private dental services in Finland

doi:10.1922/CDH_3214Widström06

Objective: The Public Dental Service (PDS) in Finland was recently opened to all adults. According to annual statistics, 75% of children and 51% of adults made dental attendances in 2008. This study aimed to survey the frequency of dental attendance across three years and compared attendance frequencies between age groups and treatment sectors. Methods: Data from municipal databases and the reimbursement register of the Social Insurance Institution were collected on all who had attended the PDS (733,000) or the private sector (473,000) in 2008 and they were retrospectively followed from 2008 to 2006. Results: Most children had attended the PDS in each year (57.4%) or in two of the three years (32.2%). Most working aged (57.3%) and elderly (69.1%) were annual attenders in the private sector. In addition, 27.1% of the former and 19.8% of the latter had attended in two of the three years. Attending in one year only was unusual. In the PDS, adult annual attendance was uncommon (31.9%), and adult attenders were fairly evenly distributed over the three categories, attending in one, two or all three years. Conclusions: Annual or biannual attendances seemed to be the norm among children in the PDS and adults in the private sector. Adults in the PDS showed irregular attendance patterns probably partly due to scarcity of resources for recall patients in the PDS.

Key words: health services research, longitudinal register study, frequency of dental visits, public, private, comparison, equity

Article Price
£15.00
Institution Article Price
£
Page Start
143
Page End
148
Authors
E. Widström, M Komu, H Mikkola

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