Implementing Dental Quality Measures in Practice

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite the national investment oral health, there is little understanding of the return in terms of quality. The increasing adoption of electronic healt records (EHRs) gives us the tools to efficiently collect quality measures over time, compare performance, and pool data across sites. Recognizing this opportunity, both the Dental Quality Alliance as well as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services have framed dental quality measures for broad implementation in the EHR. To take advantage of this sea change, we must ensure that these quality measures are unambiguously and validly definable within the context of the EHR (Aim 1) and that they can be implemented across a wide range of settings (Aim 2). At the practitioner, practice, and population levels, information about these quality measures should be available, useful, and easy to understand (Aim 3). This proposal involves 10 dental schools, and one large dental group practice (with 54 offices) dispersed across the U.S. with a track record of collaboration on existing funded projects. The investigators are passionate about making dental care safer and better: they have a long history of collaborating to this end. This project will result in an unprecedented view of the quality of care in the dental setting according to measures endorsed at the national level. More broadly, this project will advance awareness of quality measurement in dentistry: it will also yield generalizable knowledge about how to share useful and usable views of dental quality information with stakeholders.