By KHI NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts shows that midlevel dental providers such as dental therapists working in nonprofit public settings can expand access to care in underserved communities while more than paying for themselves with the revenue they generate.

The report, Expanding the Dental Team: Increasing Access to Care in Public Settings, released by the Pew Children’s Dental Campaign and partly funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, examined the experiences of two public nonprofits with dental therapists:

• Alaska’s Norton Sound Health Corp., a tribally owned and operated nonprofit health care organization that deploys dental therapists to distant rural locations.

• People’s Center Health Services, a federally qualified health center in Minneapolis, Minn., that hired a dental therapist to expand access to dental care for low-income patients.

During 2012 in Alaska, two dental therapists working for Norton Sound Health Corp. provided care to 1,352 patients, many of whom received regular access to dental care for the first time. The revenues the two dental therapists brought in exceeded the costs of their employment by a combined $216,000.

In Minnesota, the dental therapist hired by People’s Center Health Services worked with 1,756 patients during the study year, generating net revenues of more than $30,000. These results have led the clinic to hire a second dental therapist to address further unmet needs.

Compared to dentists, dental therapists perform fewer procedures, require less training and command lower salaries. Research has confirmed that they provide high-quality, cost-effective routine care and improve access to treatment in parts of the country where dentists are scarce.

In Kansas, advocates have asked legislators to approve the licensing of mid-level dental practitioners during each of the last four sessions, but that legislation has not passed.

As part of the solution to the dental care crisis, midlevel dental providers help expand the reach of the dental care team and increase access to dental care especially for low-income adults and children, people of color, and people living in rural areas. They have been working in Alaska since 2004 and in Minnesota since 2011, and Maine recently authorized midlevel providers to practice.

The Pew report also reviewed California’s Virtual Dental Home demonstration program, which deploys dental hygienists to work with dentists via telehealth to conduct screenings and serve patients in community settings such as schools, Head Start programs and nursing homes.