• Printer-friendly Oral Clinical Measure 11: Oral Health Detail Sheet (Acrobat/pdf)

Note: if the patient chooses to discontinue Phase 1 therapy, then the treatment would be considered complete.

Phase 2 = rehabilitative services, such as dentures, partials, crown and bridge, elective oral surgical procedures, periodontal surgery, and orthodontics. (Elective dental procedures.).

Note: If treatment plan completes items in Phase 1, but is not able to complete Phase 2 items (e.g., cannot afford denture), then treatment is still considered complete.

The goal of the Health Disparities Collaborative for this performance measure is 60%. The BPHC Oral Health Collaborative Pilot is in the planning and testing phase.

If Chart Audit, then sample from the sample frame of persons meeting denominator criteria.

The data needed to support this performance measure can be accessed through a MIS search, dental productivity reports or a random sample chart audit. Many health centers have already implemented a specific “dummy code” to signify when patient treatment is completed.

Oral diseases are progressive and cumulative and can affect our ability to eat, the foods we choose, how we look, and the way we communicate. These diseases can affect economic productivity and compromise our ability to work at home, at school, or on the job. Health disparities exist across population groups at all ages. Over one third of the US population (100 million people) has no access to community water fluoridation. Over 108 million children and adults lack dental insurance, which is over 2.5 times the numbers who lack medical insurance.
See: US Department of Health and Human Services. Oral Health in America: A Report of the Surgeon General: Executive Summary. Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, National Institutes of Health, 2000. See: http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/library/oralhealth

Community and migrant health center oral health programs seek to increase access to oral health care for the underserved. This performance measure addresses two fundamental areas within community and migrant health center oral health programs: 1) the need to perform a comprehensive oral health exam that culminates with an accompanying treatment plan and 2) assuring that quality care is incorporated in the process of completing needed treatment in a timely manner. The measure facilitates the identification of contributing and restricting factors and practical low cost improvement options relevant to significant areas listed above.

With access to codes associated with comprehensive oral exams and Patient Treatment Completion (PTC), most management information systems will be able to provide an average length of time associated with completion of treatment. With this information, staffing patterns, financial costs (overhead expenses) and efficiency of the oral health program can be assessed. These additional benchmarks could also be measured across health center programs at the local, regional and national levels. The ultimate goal is to measure and assure that health centers routinely and systematically deliver comprehensive, quality oral health services and patient treatment is completed within a reasonable amount of time.

The performance measure is comprehensive in that subsequent performance analysis can broach a number of significant areas, such as: appointment scheduling, ratio of oral health providers to dental operatories, ratio of oral health providers to support staff, collaboration with medical colleagues emphasizing oral health as an essential component of an interdisciplinary approach to patient care, prioritization of patients and/or procedures, general productivity and efficiency.