realdentalcosts-data

LaTeX macros for US dental price benchmarks by state, from the Real Dental Costs Open Data API.

realdentalcosts-data lets authors of reports, theses, and policy papers cite a dental procedure price without retyping or manually looking it up. The package ships a fixed snapshot of benchmark data (edition 2026.1) baked in as LaTeX macros, so documents compile offline and reproducibly.

Covers four procedures — root canal, complete dentures (both arches), single dental implant, and dental crown — with a self-pay price band (low / average / high) for each of the 50 US states plus the District of Columbia, alongside a national average. It also covers Medicaid paid-per-claim-line amounts (2023-2024, latest published period) for two CDT codes: D3330 (molar root canal) and D5110 (complete upper denture).

Data source

All figures are read programmatically from the Real Dental Costs Open Data API and are not hand-typed:

• Procedure price data: https://realdentalcosts.com/en/api/
• Methodology and source notes: https://realdentalcosts.com/en/methodology/
• Root canal page: https://realdentalcosts.com/en/root-canal/
• Dentures page: https://realdentalcosts.com/en/dentures/
• Dental implants page: https://realdentalcosts.com/en/dental-implants/
• Medicaid dataset DOI (Harvard Dataverse): https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/7F2BZI ("Medicaid dental paid per claim line by CDT code and state, 2018-2024", derived from HHS/CMS Medicaid Provider Spending by HCPCS, T-MSIS)

This is independent pricing and market research. It is NOT medical, dental, or insurance advice, and Medicaid paid_per_line_wavg figures are paid amounts per claim line, not allowed amounts, fee schedules, or consumer prices.

Installation

Drop realdentalcosts-data.sty next to your .tex file, or install it into your local TeX tree (texmf/tex/latex/realdentalcosts-data/) and run texhash / mktexlsr. Then:

\usepackage{realdentalcosts-data}

No external package dependencies — the code uses only core LaTeX2ε kernel primitives.

Usage

Example 1 — cite a single state price

The average self-pay cost of a root canal in Texas is
approximately \$\rdcPrice{root-canal}{TX}
(range \$\rdcPriceLow{root-canal}{TX}--\$\rdcPriceHigh{root-canal}{TX}),
against a US national average of \$\rdcNational{root-canal}.

Example 2 — build a small comparison table

\begin{tabular}{lrrr}
\toprule
State & Low & Average & High \\
\midrule
California & \$\rdcPriceLow{dentures}{CA} & \$\rdcPrice{dentures}{CA} & \$\rdcPriceHigh{dentures}{CA} \\
Texas      & \$\rdcPriceLow{dentures}{TX} & \$\rdcPrice{dentures}{TX} & \$\rdcPriceHigh{dentures}{TX} \\
Florida    & \$\rdcPriceLow{dentures}{FL} & \$\rdcPrice{dentures}{FL} & \$\rdcPriceHigh{dentures}{FL} \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

Example 3 — cite a Medicaid paid amount and the data version

Medicaid programs paid an average of
\$\rdcMedicaidPaid{D3330}{CA} per claim line for a molar root canal
(CDT D3330) in California, 2023--2024 (\rdcDataVersion).
Data: \rdcSource.

Macro reference

Procedure slugs: root-canal, dentures, dental-implant, dental-crown.

State codes: standard 2-letter USPS codes, plus DC for the District of Columbia (51 jurisdictions total).

Medicaid CDT codes covered in this edition: D3330 (molar root canal, 48 states published), D5110 (complete upper denture, 41 states published — some states are suppressed by HHS because a cell had fewer than 12 claim lines or 12 patients).

An unknown procedure slug, state code, or CDT code raises a \PackageWarning and prints n/a rather than failing the build or fabricating a number.

Provenance and methodology notes

• Root canal: no per-state source exists; state figures are the national range scaled by a state Restorative Cost Index (modelled, confidence 59/100).
• Dentures, dental crown: state averages are measured (ASQ360°/CareCredit Average Procedural Cost Study 2023-2024); the low/high band around each average is modelled from published national ratios (confidence 65/100).
• Dental implant: state averages are Real Dental Costs' own observed cash-price series across 51 state markets (DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20531728), validated against ASQ360° at Spearman 0.945 (confidence 72/100).
• Medicaid \rdcMedicaidPaid: derived from HHS/CMS Medicaid Provider Spending by HCPCS (T-MSIS), version 2026-02-09, geolocated via NPPES (99.4% of dental lines matched to a state). Several states carry a nominal_amounts_suspected quality flag in the source dataset because managed-care encounters can report artificially low paid amounts; see the methodology page for the full per-state quality table. This is a paid amount per claim line, not an allowed amount, fee schedule, or patient cost.

Limitations

This package is pricing and market research, not medical, dental, or insurance advice. Do not use it to make individual treatment or coverage decisions. Prices vary by provider, insurance status, treatment complexity, and negotiated rates; the figures here are state-level averages and bands, not quotes. The package ships a fixed snapshot (edition 2026.1); it will not reflect price changes after that date until a new edition is released.

License

• Code (realdentalcosts-data.sty, this documentation source): LaTeX Project Public License, version 1.3c (LPPL 1.3c). https://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt
• Underlying data (the numeric values embedded in the macros): Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Attribution: "Real Dental Costs — https://realdentalcosts.com". CDT procedure descriptors are copyright American Dental Association and are not reproduced verbatim in this package; all procedure labels are Real Dental Costs' own wording.

Version

v1.0, 2026-08-26. Data edition 2026.1 (source data generated 2026-08-25).

Maintainer

Real Dental Costs Data and Research Team <research@realdentalcosts.com> https://realdentalcosts.com/en/methodology/