| Summary: | Introduction: The Covid-19 pandemic amplified access to care challenges faced by many priority populations, including First Nations and Inuit Peoples. During wave 1 of the pandemic in Canada, dental clinicians were mandated to postpone non-emergency dental services, and in many parts of the country, all dental operations ceased. Concerning this, the Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program approved “virtual dental consultation services” and decided to temporarily cover fees for consultation services by phone or other virtual methods to help assess clients’ needs and facilitate access to emergency dental care. The purpose of this study was to investigate the utilization of the virtual code by Canadian dentists during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic for children 18 years of age or younger. Methods: NIHB provided a secure data transfer portal for dental claims paid for the procedure “consultation with client for the emergency management and triage of client’s acute oral health care needs by phone or other virtual methods” and follow-up treatment with a date of service from April 1, 2020 to August 31, 2021. Data were analyzed using NCSS 2022 Statistical Software. Statistical analyses included frequencies, descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Chi-squared test. Results: Overall, 1040 patients 18 years of age or younger had a virtual visit with follow-up treatment between April 2020 and August 2021. The mean age was 10.5 ± 4.9 years and 54.3% were female. Most of the virtual consultations were completed by general practitioners 951 (91.4%) and pediatric dentists 86 (8.3%) and most initial virtual visits were completed in Quebec 358 (34.4%), Saskatchewan 266 (25.6%), Alberta 158 (15.2%), and Manitoba 120 (11.5%). More extractions were completed than any other type of dental treatment during the first visit following the initial consultation with a total of 417 extractions. The time between the initial consultation and the first follow-up visit was 0.9 1.9 months. Conclusions: Virtual ...
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