The Virtual Dental Home
Good dental health is critical to children’s ability to grow up healthy and ready to learn so that they can succeed in school and life. Yet, tooth decay is the most common chronic disease and unmet health care need of children in California.
The Children's Partnership strongly supports AB 1174, a bill that has the potential to bring immediate preventive dental care to large numbers of California children and other underserved populations who currently go without needed dental care.
The Virtual Dental Home (VDH) is an innovative and cost-effective system for providing dental care to California’s most vulnerable children and adults. Through the VDH—a demonstration project, directed by the Pacific Center for Special Care at the University of the Pacific School of Dentistry—dental hygienists and assistants examine and collect dental information from patients in community settings—such as schools, Head Start sites, and nursing homes. They then send that information electronically via a secure Web-based system (called store-and-forward teledentistry) to the supervising dentist at a clinic or dental office. The dentist uses that information to create a dental treatment plan for the hygienist or assistant to carry out.
1174 will make it possible to implement the Virtual Dental Home statewide so that it can reach large numbers of underserved children and adults. Specifically, AB 1174:
- Allows Registered Dental Hygienists and Registered Dental Assistants to decide which dental x-rays to take when examining patients;
- Allows Registered Dental Hygienists and Extended Function Dental Assistants to place interim therapeutic restorations; and
- Requires Medi-Cal to reimburse dentists for providing store-and-forward teledentistry.
Download a fact sheet about the bill.
Download a sample support letter.
Read more about Virtual Dental Home in the news:
Virtual Dental Homes Care for Vulnerable Populations
Telehealth Project Brings 'Virtual Dental Home' to Patients
Additional Resources:
- Using Telehealth Technologies to Improve Oral Health for Vulnrable and Underserved Populations.
Read about emerging evidence that these technologies can enhance the ability of the oral health delivery system to reach vulnerable and underserved populations.
- Fix Medi-Cal Dental Coverage: Half of California's Kids Depend on It
This Issue Brief spotlights stories of children enrolled in Medi-Cal trying to access dental care. The Brief highlights the challenges facing Medi-Cal in providing dental care to children, examines the State’s efforts to address these problems, and provides an action plan to help the program serve its growing number of enrollees.
