Oral health emergency department visits include the number of patients seen in an emergency department for oral health problems. Most dental care received in hospital settings could be provided more effectively and at a lower cost in a dental office, and many hospital visits could be prevented altogether with earlier intervention and treatment.
These data can be used to identify trends and patterns of emergency department visits over time and in different geographic areas. Advanced options include age group, and gender.
In October 2015, the way hospital and emergency department discharge data were coded changed from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10-CM. This transition may affect how Oral Health hospitalization and emergency department visits are captured, caution must be used when evaluating time trends or comparing data from 2015 and before to data from 2016 or later.
Interpretation examples:
- Lee County had higher rates of emergency department visits due to oral health issues (95.7 per 10,000 residents) in 2017 than Tama County (22.5 per 10,000 residents).
- In Iowa, 27.4 per 10,000 residents younger than 5 years of age visited the emergency department due to oral health issues compared to 11.7 per 10,000 residents ages 5 through 14 in 2017.
- The rate of oral health-related emergency department visits declined from 49.9 per 10,000 residents in 2016 to 33.4 per 10,000 residents in 2017.
Measure Description:
- The ED Visit Count is the number of emergency department visits with a primary diagnosis code for an oral health problem.
- The Crude Rate (Per 10K) is the rate of emergency department visits with a primary diagnosis code for an oral health problem per 10,000 Population.
- The Age Adjusted Rate (Per 10K) is the age adjusted rate of emergency department visits with a primary diagnosis code for an oral health problem per 10,000 Population. Age adjustment to the 2000 Standard US Census is done to allow direct comparison of rates in counties and state with different population age distributions.