254529 Using Modeling and Simulation to Improve Oral Health Delivery in Hampton Roads, VA

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Mohammad Alzahrani, PhD , Oral Health Department, Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
The purpose of this study is to examine the system performance in delivering oral health services in a public health district based on the Conceptual Framework to Measure Performance of the Public Health System (PHS). Based on this Conceptual Framework, a predictive model was developed to measure the performance of public health district in delivering oral health services. The main objective of this study is to predict the change in performance of public health district dental clinic in delivering oral health services with the addition of a dental hygienist. Five public health district dental clinics in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia (USA) were used as case studies with data from fiscal years 2005- 2010. Results showed that adding a new healthcare provider (a dental hygienist) to the system has a statistically significant influence in delivering oral health services at all public health districts' dental clinics in number of performance metrics, namely: number of patients' visits per day, diagnosis and preventive services, corrective services, and total number of dental services (p < 0.05).This model can be expanded and applied to other oral health systems to provide additional insights into services improvement.

Learning Areas:
Administration, management, leadership
Provision of health care to the public
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
-Define the concept of modeling and simulation in the public oral health service settings. -Identify the areas where healthcare delivery system needs the most appropriate approach to address the problem of delivering oral healthcare and to meet the need of uninsured individuals. Design a predictive model based on the conceptual framework dimensions: mission, structural capacity, processes, and outcomes to predict the performance of public health district in delivering oral health services. -Discuss how modeling and simulation methodology has been used in different healthcare settings such as: emergency departments, surgery rooms, pediatric clinics and dental practices. -Explain how operations research principles such as queuing theory and process model simulation have been applied in the modeling and simulation field to study patient flow. -Evaluate the system performance in delivering oral health services in a public health district.

Keywords: Public Health Service, Oral Health Outcomes

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: this paper is part of my dissertation.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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