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Research definitively shows that oral health is integral to overall health, but the US health system continues to treat oral health care as separate from the rest of the health care system at the expense of patient outcomes and health care costs.
Interprofessional education (IPE) and interprofessional practice (IPP) offer a proven pathway to more equitable, efficient, and person-centered care, yet they remain unevenly implemented and difficult to sustain at scale.
This final white paper in CareQuest Institute’s interprofessional series, authored by a team of medical, dental, and health policy experts, identifies four barriers that prevent IPE and IPP from becoming routine practice — and recommends corresponding policy solutions to overcome these barriers:
- Professional regulatory frameworks that reinforce siloed scopes of practice and supervision
- Education and training infrastructure that underprepares future providers for real-world team-based care
- Payment and delivery systems that undervalue prevention, coordination, and shared accountability
- Data and technology systems that inhibit interoperability, shared measurement, and evaluation of team-based outcomes
Co-author Zachary A. Brian, DMD, MHA, Adams School of Dentistry, University of North Carolina, writes:
The fact is, we know what to do, and proven models are in hand. We have the urgency. What we have lacked, quite frankly, is the policy coherence to make any of it stick. Fixing the Fracture is an argument that we can no longer afford this divide, and it offers a road map for closing it.”
View policy recommendations
The companion guide organizes the policy recommendations by implementation tiers based on complexity and by stakeholder group.
You may also be interested in:
- Transforming Oral Health Care Through Interprofessional Education (IPE), a white paper and use cases exploring IPE in health care and the persistent absence of oral health in education programs.
- From Silos to Synergy: Integrating Oral Health into Whole-Person Care, Through Interprofessional Practice (IPP), a white paper and use cases examining what IPP looks like when health systems have the will and resources to build it.
- Medical-Dental-Behavioral Integration, a supplement to JDR Clinical & Translational Research, featuring nine articles that provide strong evidence for integrated health systems.