New Mid-Level Provider?
A bill in the Minnesota legislature would create the Advanced Dental Hygiene Practitioner (ADHP). There's a hearing on the bill scheduled for Feb. 25.
The Advanced Dental Hygiene Practitioner model was developed in response to the Surgeon General's call to action to increase access through increasing workforce flexibility and productivity. The new provider will work in collaboration with existing members of the oral health care team to provide services to patients unable to access a traditional dental office. ADHPs can bring a range of oral health services directly to patients in settings they have ready access to. ADHPs will perform the traditional range of preventive services currently administered by dental hygienists as well as therapeutic, palliative, prescriptive, diagnostic, and minimally invasive restorative services.
ADHP advocates are comparing the new provider to nurse practitioners and using the word "team" a lot. The also use the word "collaboration."
"The ADHP will serve as a mid-level provider in oral health akin to the nurse practitioner in medicine," says Mary Beth Kensek, RDH, RF, BS, MNDHA President. "ADHPs will provide direct access points to patients in currently under-utilized settings such as schools, nursing homes, hospitals, and public health clinics. The concept of the ADHP is certainly not to supplant the role of dentists, but to enhance the function of the oral health care team by providing oral health care services that so many are unable to obtain in a traditional dental office."
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