LTCI Watch: The Teeth

When the researchers compared the data for participants who had or had not visited the dentist in the past 12 months, they found that 49% of the participants who’d seen the dentist were in excellent or very good health. Only 32% of the participants who had failed to visit the dentist were in such good health.

The Gallup figures do not directly show whether the participants who’d visited the dentist recently had better oral health than the other participants. The figures also do not show whether good oral health leads to good general health, or if good general health increases the odds that people will get good dental care.

But other academic studies have suggested that there might be a correlation between older people’s oral health and LTC costs.

Mary Haumschild and Ryan Haumschild reported in 2009 in JAMDA, an academic journal, that providing medical care for LTC facility residents with good oral health costs less than providing care for residents with poor oral health.  

In 2011, Y.H. Yu and others reported in the Journal of the American Geriatric Society that elderly people who still lived in the community and lacked teeth were significantly more likely to report having problems with activities of daily living than otherwise similar elderly people who still had teeth. The researchers said they needed more data to determine whether lack of teeth — edentulism — was interfering with activities of daily living, whether disabilities were caused by edentulism, or whether some independent factor was causing both edentulism and problems with activities of daily living.

A small Japanese study found that providing dental care for nursing home patients did appear to have a positive effect on their quality of life.

Idea: Maybe some company that sells both long-term care insurance (LTCI) and dental insurance could try marketing LTCI heavily to people who have a good track record of going to the dentist, then see what the LTCI claims are like for the folks who take good care of their teeth.