UTHealth Houston launches study using Texas All Payor Claims Database to improve pediatric dental care

UTHealth Houston School of Public Health’s Center for Health Care Data, McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston, and UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry have announced a new collaboration to demonstrate the value of the Texas All Payor Claims Database, a state-legislated resource.

The project, led by Trudy Millard Krause, DrPH, professor in the Department of Management, Policy, and Community Health at the School of Public Health and co-director of the Center for Health Care Data; Gregory Olson, DDS, MSc, associate dean for Technology Services and Informatics at the School of Dentistry; and Muhammad F. Walji, PhD, MS, professor and inaugural chair of the Department of Clinical and Health Informatics at McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics, marks the first use of the database to examine patterns of utilization and associated medical and dental journeys of pediatric patients undergoing general anesthesia or deep sedation for dental procedures.

The findings from this project are expected to have implications for enhancing service delivery, improving patient outcomes, and informing policy development related to dental procedures and the use of deep sedation in children.

In 2021, the Texas legislature passed House Bill 2090, appointing the Center for Health Care Data as the administrator of the Database. The database aims to increase transparency in health care costs, utilization, and access to improve the affordability, availability, and quality of health care in Texas.

The database is estimated to contain claims and demographic data on over 80% of insured individuals in the state, covering approximately 23 million people. It includes adjudicated claims from Jan. 1, 2019, to the present, encompassing medical, dental, behavioral health, and pharmacy services with monthly data submissions. The current validation and testing phase of the database includes a limited number of demonstration projects, which will help create and refine data quality algorithms before making the data available to qualified researchers.

“The Center has initiated several research projects designed not only to test the data but also to represent the potential implications for health research, health policy, and health care transparency,” Krause said. “This collaboration will demonstrate the richness of the available database dental data and its overlap with medical outcomes while spotlighting important research related to patient safety.”

The collaboration offers a unique opportunity to study dental claims and inform research across participating schools.

“Dr. Walji and I are excited to collaborate with the Center for Health Care Data to conduct research using the database dental and medical data,” Olson said. “This collaboration provides us an opportunity to access a robust dataset that has never before been available in this state, or even in the nation. We chose an important issue related to patient safety, the findings of which we hope will improve service delivery and patient outcomes for the youth of Texas who undergo general anesthesia and deep sedation for dental procedures.”

For more information on the database, visit go.uth.edu/txapcd.