Oral Health Plan Section

PURPOSE

To ensure the availability of a qualified workforce to address oral heath needs, essential to the overall health of all residents.

OVERVIEW

Workforce strategies focus on:

• Establishing sustainable fiscal resources to support and expand the Commonwealth’s workforce through education, outreach and policy.
• Ensuring a dental home and comprehensive oral health services for all residents, by increasing the number of dental providers serving high risk populations and maximizing partnerships and collaborations with stakeholders.
• Recruiting, developing and maintaining a culturally responsive oral health workforce by education, training and increasing the number of multicultural dental providers.

GOAL 1: Establish sustainable fiscal resources to support and expand the oral health workforce.

Objectives:

1. Provide financial incentives and resources (including scholarships and loan forgiveness programs, scholarships) that encourage the expansion of the oral health workforce. (2010‐2015)
2. Ensure the adequate financing of government‐run insurance programs and departments working on oral health. (2010‐2015)
3. Facilitate the efficient allocation of fiscal resources to support expansion of the oral health workforce. (2010‐2015)
4. Ensure adequate resources for publicly funded dental education and training programs to meet current and future labor demands for oral health providers. (2010‐2015)

Action Steps:

• Develop a campaign to educate legislators on the need for financial assistance to support dental, dental hygiene and post‐graduate dental students, as well as licensed dental practitioners who practice in or would like to practice in underserved areas, as well as the need for increased funding for loan and scholarship programs for dental professionals.
• Develop a report for legislators and government officials demonstrating the impact of limited oral health financing and the benefit of increasing financing for oral health services to improve the health care system.
• Promote an oral health license plate to generate funding to support workforce expansion initiatives for dental professionals.
• Propose legislation to include oral health providers as members of the Health Care Workforce Center Advisory Council and allow dental professionals to be eligible for associated loan repayment funds.
• Promote the financing of residency programs in public health settings utilizing Indirect and Direct Medical Education funding reimbursement through Medicare and Medicaid.
• Promote the financing of recruitment or apprenticeships programs in high schools.
• Identify best practices that demonstrate a measurable improvement to oral health for replication and expansion.

GOAL 2: Ensure a dental home and access to comprehensive oral health services for all residents of the Commonwealth.

Objectives:

1. Increase the number of private providers actively participating in government-sponsored dental insurance (MassHealth and Commonwealth Care). (2010‐2015)
2. Establish sustainable partnerships and collaborations between dental providers and other healthcare professionals to ensure continuity of comprehensive oral health care (with medical doctors, nurse practitioners, nurses, community health workers, case managers etc). (By 2015)
3. Double the number of pediatric primary care providers who deliver oral health services including oral health screenings, fluoride varnish application, and dental referrals for patients at risk. (By 2012)
4. Increase the number of adult primary care providers, including obstetricians and gynecologists, who perform oral health and oral cancer screenings and make dental referrals during routine medical visits. (2010‐2015)
5. Increase the number of dental providers working in a safety net setting and the number of oral health safety net programs (e.g. community health centers, mobile dental care programs) performing outreach, enrolling and serving as a dental home for those who have no dental insurance, including special populations such as the homeless. (2010‐2015)
6. Maintain or increase (as needed) the total number of dental providers in the Commonwealth. (2010‐2015)

Action Steps:

• Increase the enrollment and active participation of licensed dentists in the MassHealth Program to 65%.
• Enroll 200 dental hygienists as providers in the MassHealth Dental Program.
• Increase reimbursement for dental services provided under MassHealth to the 75th percentile of the ADA Survey of General Dentists.
• Offer four model business plans for dentists, dental hygienists or dental programs to efficiently integrate MassHealth patients into practices.
• Increase the number of dental departments and clinical oral health staff, including dental hygienists, in community health centers.
• Establish a plan for fostering partnerships between oral health professionals and local community health workers to improve capacity for providing culturally responsive dental care.
• Increase the number of general practice dental residency positions (General Practice Residency or Advanced Education in General Dentistry Residency) in by 50%.
• Conduct a survey of new dental graduates to identify factors that drive employment decisions after graduation from an accredited Massachusetts dental, dental hygiene and dental assisting program (e.g., educational debt, geography, cost of living, specialization), especially factors that may increase the number of new graduates who decide to practice in the Commonwealth.
• Establish a Dental Professional Recruitment Program workgroup to explore retention of new graduates providing dental services in the Commonwealth.
• Explore and pilot dental team member models and other alternative workforce models.

GOAL 3: Recruit, develop and maintain a culturally responsive oral health workforce by education.

Objectives:

1. Increase the proportion of dental providers receiving training in cultural competency. (2010‐2015)
2. Increase the number of multilingual dental practices. (2010‐2015)
3. Increase the number of multicultural dental school graduates. (2010‐2015)
4. Increase the number of foreign trained dentists in private practice. (2010‐2015)

Action Steps:

• Promote education and training programs focusing on cultural and linguistic responsiveness for dentists, dental hygienists and dental assistants.
• Establish a health care workforce data warehouse which includes race, ethnicity and languages of dentists and dental hygienists, and set benchmarks for increasing the diversity of the dental workforce.
• Promote interpretation and translation services that reflect the language diversity of dental patients.
• Promote recruitment, retention, preparation and development of multicultural faculty.
• Promote and support an oral health provider pipeline workgroup investigating career expansion initiatives in alliance with dental educators.
• Investigate new pathways for limited license dentists to secure full dental licensure in the Commonwealth. 

Workgroup List

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