Establishing Accountability in the Dental Healthcare Industry to Promote Oral Health and Drive Utilization

The common oral illnesses (i.e. tooth decay, bleeding gums, oral malodor, and bone loss) are preventable. Studies demonstrate that timely dental visits and improved consumer awareness decrease the prevalence of poor oral health. Increasingly, studies validate an intimate connection between oral and overall health. Quality Assurance Reporting Requirement (QARR) and Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) measures consistently demonstrate low utilization of dental care services. To increase utilization rates, the finger-pointing and lack of accountability amongst the payer, provider and consumer needs to be addressed. Given the nature and prevalence of poor oral health, oral health education (behavioral intervention) provides an effective and efficient method for overall health promotion. Recommendations to increase accountability, consumer autonomy, competence and timely utilization of dental care are made. Short term changes include lowering the HEDIS age level and adding specific oral health and dental visit measures to HEDIS, raising national and statewide QARR measures, creating vectors for caregiver oral health education including multilingual oral health education “outlets”, multilingual public media oral health information tools, training non dentist providers of preventive services as oral health educators and training and incentivize providers. Long term modification includes implementation of auditing protocols for government sponsored programs and offices, monitoring wastage, and creation of a method that can provide transparency to health promotion and care.