Visits to the emergency department for dental issues have doubled from 1.1 million in 2000 to 2.2 million in 2012, according to data analyzed by the American Dental Association and featured in the USA Today.
The problem stems in part from lack of dental insurance, as 15 percent of dental ED visits are from people with government insurance or those without insurance, according to the report.
The lack of insurance means people don't visit the dentist for preventive care as often as they should. "If we were going to the dentist more often, we could avoid a lot of this," one dentist told the USA Today. "Prevention is priceless."
Four in 10 adults in the U.S. have not had a dental visit in the last year.
To combat the ED visit issue, the ADA advocates for ED referral programs that get patients into a dentist chair. The popularity of such programs has grown, as there are 125 referral programs this year, up from just eight in 2014, according to USA Today.
One referral program is at Truman Medical Center-Hospital Hill in Kansas City, Mo. "An emergency physician can provide some temporary care — things like pain medication and antibiotics — but rarely are we able to definitively treat the underlying cause of dental programs," Jeffrey Hackman, the emergency room clinical operations director at Truman, told USA Today. "We know that through the ER referral program, a good proportion of them are getting definitive care. We've certainly seen far fewer repeat visits."