Second Opinion: Fla. dental group emphasizes access to care

Following a recent DrBicuspid.com article that reported on an August 7 study in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry, the Florida Dental Association (FDA) would like to publicly state our position regarding access to dental care for Florida's Medicaid-insured population.

Both the Journal of Public Health Dentistry study and the DrBicuspid.com article cite a letter from the FDA to the Telehealth Advisory Council, which includes a reference to the ADA Health Policy Institute's Medicaid provider data.

It was not the FDA's intent to use the data to prove to policymakers or anyone else that Florida had adequate providers to support its Medicaid population. Let me be clear. That is not the FDA's position.

Jolene Paramore, DMD, president of the Florida Dental Association.

In addition to advocating for increasing Medicaid funding and the medical loss ratio, the FDA champions initiatives to engage dentists' participation in Florida's Medicaid program and improve oral health in rural and underserved areas.

In 2015, the FDA launched Florida's Action for Dental Health, our comprehensive approach to help achieve these goals. This report provides key initiatives targeted at increasing and expanding opportunities to improve access to dental care for individuals who receive dental care through the Medicaid program. A two-year progress report is available on the association's website.

Several key efforts of Florida's Action for Dental Health would leverage the state's existing dental workforce of nearly 14,000 licensed active dentists and nearly 14,000 licensed active dental hygienists to address these issues and increase participation in Florida's Medicaid program (data on the number of active practitioners were accessed from the Florida Department of Health's healthcare providers license verification website on August 22, 2018).

We advocate for reinstating Florida's dental student loan repayment program with mandatory Medicaid participation to help incentivize dentists to work in rural and underserved areas.

A second initiative championed by the FDA is training and integrating community dental health coordinators into the dental team to serve as patient navigators. Community dental health coordinators are dental assistants and dental hygienists trained as case workers to help direct individuals to appropriate settings in their communities to receive dental care and help reduce visits to the emergency room.

We also partnered with the Florida Dental Hygienists' Association to support passage of 2011 legislation allowing dental hygienists to provide preventive dental care, such as sealants and fluorides, in health access settings without the supervision of a dentist.

Additionally, the FDA Foundation hosts a two-day Florida Mission of Mercy event each year in a different city, providing care at no cost to Florida patients who would otherwise go without care. Launched in 2014, the next Florida Mission of Mercy event is scheduled for March 2019 in Orlando.

The FDA and the FDA Foundation have also spearheaded a first-of-its-kind impact study to gather data from Florida Mission of Mercy events to determine the characteristics of patients attending these events, including their dental use patterns and barriers to care. This fall, we will host our first oral health summit to discuss these impact study findings and collaborate on opportunities to foster community-specific efforts to improve oral health and care utilization.

We recognize that there is an urgent need to improve oral health for all Floridians and increase routine dental care in the state's underserved communities. Our organization and members are working collaboratively with other stakeholders to help foster solutions that will ensure all Floridians have access to comprehensive dental care.

We welcome all interested parties to join us in support of Florida's Action for Dental Health. It's our hope that moving forward, we can all keep the focus on finding those solutions while using the prevention strategies we know work to decrease the need for extensive dental care in the general population.

Jolene Paramore, DMD, is the president of the FDA and the chair principal investigator of the Florida Mission of Mercy Impact Study.

The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.