Patient-Transition Networks, Multiservice Trajectories, and Specialty Activity in a University Dental Clinic: A Retrospective Ecological Study.

BACKGROUND/

objectivesRoutine administrative dental data can quantify specialty activity and reconstruct sequential patient movement when operational definitions and analytical provenance are explicit. To reconcile institutional activity through 30 June 2026, describe the derivation of all treatment records, and reconstruct patient transitions across 18 dental services.

methodsThe official institutional report was the source of truth for descriptive totals. Patient-level workbooks were used for deduplication and transition analysis after excluding dates later than 30 June 2026. A treatment record was a coded administrative row; appointments and first visits followed the official report definitions. Directed transitions linked different services in consecutive dated patient stages. PageRank, betweenness and modularity were recalculated from the resulting matrix.

resultsThe official report comprised 98,685 treatment records represented by 476 treatment codes, 24,327 unique appointments and 1351 first visits. There were 7260 unique anonymized patient codes; 13,026 was the non-additive sum of service-specific patient counts. The cutoff-restricted chronology included 3947 multiservice patients and 16,347 dated stages. The network contained 253 directed service pairs and 8777 transitions (density 0.827). The leading PageRank values were RX (0.202), CIRUGÍA BUCAL (0.149), MEA (0.101), MIA (0.088), and MPSI (0.062). Modularity was low (Q = 0.042).

conclusionsThe descriptive results are fully reconciled to the official report, while network estimates are restricted to reproducible individual trajectories from 1 January 2025 to 30 June 2026. The observed network characterizes sequential service use and should not be interpreted as proof of formal referral.