by Paige Minemyer | Dec 5, 2018 8:47am
Telemedicine has gotten plenty of chatter when it comes
to specialty and mental health care, but more providers
should drill down on using it for oral health care, according to a new
study.
The University of Rochester’s Eastman Institute for Oral Health
piloted a teledentistry program that in 2014 extended into a
partnership with Finger Lakes Community Health, a federally qualified health
center, to provide access to pediatric dentistry. Finger Lakes facilities
have screened more than 850 rural pediatric patients in the program to date,
95% of which had oral care needs that could not be treated at a community
dental clinic, according to the study published in
Health Affairs.
Of the program’s initial 251 patients, 93% had oral care needs
that required general anesthesia. The majority (87%) of these treatments were
completed. Dorota Kopycka-Kedzierawski, the study’s lead author and a
dentist with the University of Rochester, said many of these patients, who were
typically between the ages of two and six, had never seen a dentist
before.
Though telehealth adoption has yet to fully spread nationwide,
the results of the Rochester study show that it’s time for dentistry to be
integrated into “telemedicine in the mainstream,” Kopycka-Kedzierawski said
at an event marking the launch of the Health Affairs issue.
Tooth decay, she said, is one of the most common infections in
children specifically, and can have long-term impacts on their
health, so there are population health benefits to increased access to dental
care.
In the Eastman Institute program, the patients, their parents
and the care team chat with a pediatric dentist via video chat before
the dentist examines the child’s teeth using an oral camera. After the exam,
the dentist discusses the findings with the parents and clinicians, building a
care plan.
While the virtual visits addressed access gaps for some
children, Kopycka-Kedzierawski said it’s also a positive experience
for the pediatric patients.
“They love it,” she said. “They like to see their teeth on TV.”
Policymakers should consider oral health as part of the care
continuum as telehealth programs continue to evolve, according to the study.
For example, integrating teledentistry into a broader telemedicine program
could allow multiple providers to address more than one of a patient’s needs at
one time, and could give primary care or other frontline clinicians the tools
to direct patients to needed oral care.
“The advancement of teledentistry underscores the need
for its integration with local, regional, and national telehealth programs and
the role of policymakers in establishing a balanced framework
for teledentistry within the overarching health care system,”
the researchers said.
The barriers to this expansion, according to the study, include
disparate state and federal statutes governing telehealth broadly, and
reimbursement concerns. Addressing these broad concerns about telemedicine, the
researchers said, will also allow for greater use of this technology in oral
care.
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