MarketScan Dental Database

MarketScan is one of the largest and longest running proprietary US claims databases used for healthcare research. The data come from a selection of large employers, health plans, and government and public organizations. The database includes de-identified, patient-level longitudinal data for nearly 300 million unique patients, using data from several domains.

The Dental Database comprises dental health plan enrollment and claims data that corresponds with and is linkable to a given year and version of the Commercial and Medicare Databases. It contains three types of tables, each of which are divided into a commercial segment (DNCE) and Medicare segment (DNMC) that correlate to the individual’s primary medical coverage:

• The Annual Enrollment Summary Table contains a single record per person per year. The annual summary contains monthly arrays of variables such as indicators of enrollment (yes/no), days enrolled, data type, and plan type for each month of the year. There are also variables indicating the number of months during the year with enrollment and the total annual enrollment days.
• The Enrollment Detail Table contains one record of enrollment per person per month for an individual enrollee, regardless of whether any demographic values have changed from the previous month.
• The Claims Table contains data from claims submitted by: (1) dental providers for reimbursement from the patient’s dental plan, or (2) dental encounter data if the patient was enrolled in a capitated dental plan. Each record represents a specific service provided to the patient.