Proposed Accreditation Standards for Dental Therapy Education Programs
The Commission on Dental Accreditation (CODA) directed that the proposed Dental Therapy Standards be distributed to the appropriate communities of interest for review and comment, with comment due December 1, 2013.
Send written comments to:
Sherin Tooks, Ed.D., M.S.
Director, Commission on Dental Accreditation
211 East Chicago Avenue, 19th Floor
Chicago, IL 60611
[email protected]
The ADHA policies support the establishment of new dental hygiene-based provider models that result in providers who are graduates of accredited education programs, are licensed, and are able to provide care directly to patients. While CODA has directed circulation of the proposed Dental Therapy Education Standards, there will be no implementation date until further documentation has been provided which shows that criteria #2 and #5 of the Principles and Criteria Eligibility of Allied Dental Programs for Accreditation by the Commission on Dental Accreditation, are met. It further notes that such criteria have not been utilized for any other allied dental program seeking accreditation. For more information of the ADHA stance on these standards, visit the ADHA website or contact your ADHA District Trustee.(1) The framework for accreditation should not be unattainable or overly difficult, but instead should adequately address each decisive factor for review. Criteria #2 and #5 should not create a barrier to the accreditation process or seem intended to prolong the development of accreditation standards. Initial outcome measures are being collected and demonstrate that these dental therapy clinicians currently in practice are providing safe and effective oral health care to a population of patients whose oral health care needs would have gone unmet, in most instances. Minnesota was the first, and is the only state in the USA, to provide for a mid-level oral health practitioner. The program at Metropolitan State University/Normandale Community College is a hygiene-based program track. The program at the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry, as it was initially developed, is a non-hygiene based program track. Accreditation of these programs is likely to be important in many other states where legislation to authorize dental hygiene therapy practice has been introduced, such as Kansas, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington.
