Medical-Dental Integration in Ohio: Improving prevention and coordination at the local level.

Access to high-quality, preventive oral health care is fundamental for an individual to achieve positive health outcomes. Recognizing that health is influenced by where a person lives, it is important to consider how systems of care must adapt to meet the changing needs of a community over time. Medical-dental integration is a critical component designed to enhance and broaden the oral health care delivery model. MORE Care® is a framework for communities to leverage their resources and relationships by providing tools and resources to integrate preventive oral health services into primary care settings. This report will show how local stakeholders advocated for an innovative approach to improve oral health gaps for children in Ohio. The MORE Care Ohio pilot is expanding access to preventive oral health services by featuring medical-dental integration to close patient care gaps and build an integrated oral health network. Providing a framework for medical and dental teams to collaborate, seven clinical practices (three medical and four dental) agreed to participate in a 9-month learning collaborative and 16-months of performance monitoring.

Pre-doctoral dental faculty perceptions toward value-based care: An exploratory study.

OBJECTIVES: To explore pre-doctoral faculty perceptions toward implementation of value-based care (VBC) in didactic and clinical teaching. METHODS: This project was a collaborative effort between CareQuest and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Adams School of Dentistry introducing VBC to pre-doctoral dental faculty as part of a new curriculum. Following a faculty development session on VBC in June 2021, faculty and subject matter experts were invited to participate in qualitative interviews. Subject matter experts were interviewed to establish a baseline for VBC knowledge and understanding. Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Analysis was conducted by two analysts using ATLAS.ti and a thematic analysis approach. RESULTS: Six faculty and two subject matter experts participated in interviews. Although dental faculty demonstrated some understanding of VBC, they recognized that more training is required to build in-depth knowledge and implementation strategies for teaching dental students. Faculty discussed value-based concepts such as prevention-focused teaching, person-centered care, and disease management over invasive restoration of teeth, and how VBC is bringing about a paradigm shift in dentistry that needs to be reflected in dental education. They acknowledged a disconnect between VBC in didactic teaching versus clinical instruction. Those interviewed believed it would take time to shift faculty mindset and readiness to teach VBC, and continued efforts are needed at the leadership and faculty level for acceptance and implementation. CONCLUSIONS: Although dental faculty recognize that VBC can bring a shift in dental practice, more training and guidance to implement it in didactic and clinical teaching is needed.

Understanding value in oral health: the oral health value-based care symposium.

OBJECTIVE: There are both opportunities and challenges with the implementation of oral health value-based care (OHVBC). To tackle concerns and advance conversation, a symposium was convened with subject matter experts to develop a gap analysis and capture insights into professional readiness for value-based care design. METHODS: The symposium was convened as a private event for 46 participants over the course of one and a half days in December 2019. Thematic analyses utilized the OHVBC Readiness Framework (DentaQuest Partnership, 2019) to further codify conversations as part of the gap-analysis process. Poll Everywhere, a text messaging application that allows participants to answer questions in real time, was also employed to solicit responses. RESULTS: Attendees of the symposium felt that OHVBC would have a large portion of market share within the next 10 years. A qualitative assessment of multiple table discussions determined that the participants developed more consensus around themes for the current state and the future-desired state than the action-planning needed to close the gap between the two. This may relate to individual ideology, and the siloed environment is still prevalent in the oral health realm. In a postsymposium survey, respondent attendees did not perceive that COVID-19 would delay or negatively impact the adoption of OHVBC and may result in accelerating its utilization. CONCLUSION: The oral health community is experiencing multiple drivers to adopt more OHVBC within business and care models. However, there is still a lack of uniformity on how to execute this delivery model.