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Have you ever heard of the Institute for Oral Health? This organization identifies best practices in oral health and then encourages collaboration between dental insurance companies, physicians, dentists (private practice, academia and public health) and researchers to benefit the public and the profession. This year’s annual conference theme was on preventive dentistry and I was lucky to attend.
Have you ever heard of the Institute for Oral Health? This organization identifies best practices in oral health and then encourages collaboration between dental insurance companies, physicians, dentists (private practice, academia and public health) and researchers to benefit the public and the profession. This year’s annual conference theme was on preventive dentistry and I was lucky to attend.
From the 200 attendees at the conference, I met only one other dental office manager – so I thought it might be worthwhile to share an office manager’s perspective on the future of preventive dentistry.
At this conference, a vision was shared that although everyone knows dental infection is an entirely preventable disease, we truly can work together to eliminate this disease – just like polio in the past. The President of the ADA challenged the group to set a timeline – let’s eradicate dental disease in the U.S. in 10 years! The first step to making this a reality is to focus on diagnosing and treating the disease in addition to treating the symptoms (fillings, crowns, replacing missing teeth).
To diagnose a caries infection, you use a risk assessment. Part oral health habits and lifestyle questionnaire, part saliva and bacteria evaluation and part clinical exam, this risk assessment will serve to let your patients know if they have this disease today and what risk level they are for developing it in the future. The ADA has published a caries risk assessment form on their website and Dr. Kim Kutsch, CEO of CariFree, shared his version at the conference as well at http://www.carifree.com/dentists/downloads.html.
As dentistry starts to use these risk assessments in private practice, I can see three major opportunities for office managers to help patients and their practices:
As caries risk assessment becomes more popular in dental practices as a preventive approach, there will be many changes. Dentists and clinical staff will expand their focus from treating symptoms to talking about the disease of dental decay and helping people understand that they can stop this disease. Insurance companies will begin to reimburse based on the patient’s level of health. Office managers can play a major role in preventive dentistry by managing documentation of risk assessment results for insurance payment and dental practice marketing as well as developing people skills to connect with patients trying to fight this disease. As office managers help to make a difference in people’s lives through preventive dentistry, we all win.