G-2309-19805

Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) is a public, safety-net healthcare system that provides care to over 140,000 patients in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston's Metro North region. CHA operates three hospitals, fourteen primary care clinics, three pharmacies and one dental clinic. CHA’s patients are largely from low-income backgrounds (60% insured by Medicaid), are racially/ethnically diverse (39% Latino, 17% Black and 9% Asian) with many receiving healthcare in a language other than English (40%).

In 2021, CHA undertook an Oral Health Needs Assessment (OHNA) to gain a deeper understanding of the oral health needs of the community. The central issues identified relate to barriers accessing oral healthcare services. (e.g., concerns about the potential cost of dental care, an absence of trust in dental providers and challenges getting a dental appointment).

In July 2023, CHA launched a new oral health screening program for Medicaid-insured adult and pediatric patients at all fourteen primary care sites. The screening program consists of one question that is asked to all Medicaid-insured adult and pediatric patients attending office visits; “In the past 12 months, have you visited a dentist or oral health care provider?” If the patient answers “No”, it is deemed a positive screen, and the patient is given instructions from masshealth-dental.net on how to find a dentist that accepts Medicaid to establish a dental home.

This grant will connect and then evaluate the effect of connecting patients with a positive screen with teledentistry to close care gaps by increasing access to oral healthcare services through CHA’s Virtual Dental Clinic. For this pilot, CHA will partner with Quip®, a virtual dental platform.

There is strong community engagement throughout this proposal including the foundation of the work is based on a community needs assessment, patient focus groups as part of the evaluation and input from existing community/patient advisory groups.

CHA is requesting $125,000 which is less than 1% of the organization’s overall budget. Funds will be used to support staff time, participant and provider incentives, publication costs, and translation and coding expenses.