Projects

021 – Newcastle Oral Health Promotion (Outcome and Value) Pilot

• Chief Investigator A: Dr Melanie Hayes
• Associate Investigators: Dr Paul Beath, Dr Kathleen Mathews, Dr Jo Li, Dr Mark Morrin, Dr David Pilgrim
• Support: ADANSW and ADA Newcastle Division

Introduction

There is a significant gap and gradient in oral health knowledge and practice between and within dental health workforce, medical and allied health and lay people groups. There are also significant reasons that preventative procedures are not always applied in dental practice, such as financial incentivisation and perceived need. There is also a developing paradigm in health and oral health of building value and outcome measures into remuneration and making these publicly available.

Aims

This is the first stage in a pilot program and seeks to:

• Investigate current practices of the dental team in examination diagnosis and preventative advice
• Investigate patients’ awareness, understanding and use of preventative services, advice and their risk status
• Map existing literature, including guidelines developed by professional organisations and peak bodies.

Rationale

Evaluating current practices by dentists and the clinical team, and patients’ perceptions and needs will inform development of evidence based clinical process and protocols aligned to patient reported outcomes.

The current practices of dentists and their teams is the first stage in creating usable clinical tools and processes to adapt existing clinical guidelines to provide that care.

Methodology 

This phase will consist of a literature review and cross-sectional surveys of dental practitioners, and patients. The project team will develop questionnaires, patient/ public and dental team recipient selection, survey company and data collection and statistical advice. A reference group will be used to broaden the input into the questionnaire, complete the pilot testing and allow modification.

What are the expected outcomes?

It is anticipated this project will:

• Establish the oral health of patients involved in the study
• Inform the implementation of an Oral health Care and Report for periodontal disease, caries, non-carious tooth loss and oral cancer.