The Health Policy Institute (HPI) has released a model predicting future dental spending in 2020 and 2021. The Modeling the Impact of COVID-19 on U.S. Dental Spending — June 2020 Update discusses some key points for the dental community:

• Dental practice and patient volume are steadily increasing following the COVID-19 pandemic but are still considerably lower when compared to pre-COVID-19 levels.
• The dental care spending model predicts a 38 percent decline in 2020 and a 20 percent decline in spending in the year 2021.
• The HPI’s April 2020 spending projections compared to June 2020 projections show an optimistic direction for dental spending. HPI thinks this is due to the dental community recovering much faster than anticipated and patient volume quickly increasing.
• These projections do not consider the possibility of the second wave of COVID-19.
• The HPI will continue to release updated dental spending models, as the second wave of COVID-19 may cause a decline in the dental economy once again.

You can also check out more COVID-19 information in our resource center in the COVID-19 folder. Please let us know what you think. Feel free to leave comments about your experiences during COVID-19.