Clustering the Oral and Dental Health Centers in Turkey with Data Mining Methods according to the Service they Offer

The purpose of this study is to cluster all of the oral and dental health centers that have a wide range of service and rate (119 in 2009, 117 in 2010) in 7 regions of Turkey apart from the dental hospitals under the Ministry of Health according to the services they offer and determine the service groups which affect the clustering. The second aim which the study has focused on is to determine whether the centers in the regions are different from each other in terms of the services they offer. In the clustering analyses, Random Forest and K-Means Clustering were used. Seven regions are statistically different from each other in terms of the surgical tooth extraction, dental fillings, root canal therapy, operation, therapy services and the number of dentists in 2009; and in 2010 in terms of the surgical tooth extraction, root canal therapy, fixed and removable denture and scaling services.