U of Maryland Dental School to receive grant worth up to $200,000

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Aug 9, 2007 by Karen Buckelew

A grant worth as much as $200,000 to the pediatric dentistry clinic at the University of Maryland Dental School could make a difference in children's lives and serve as a model for the rest of the country, advocates said Wednesday.

It was the death of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Prince George's County boy, in February that shed new light nationwide on the role dental care can play in a child's health.

Alyce Driver, Deamonte's mother, sat quietly and looked on Wednesday as officials from the dental school and AmeriChoice, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, announced the grant to fund enhancements for the school's pediatric dentistry clinic.

The grant from AmeriChoice will cover the cost of a pediatric dentistry case manager to help shepherd the clinics' Medicaid patents through their care, including helping them keep appointments -- a large barrier to care for low-income families.

It also will establish a pediatric dental fellowship at the school and a mini-pediatric dentistry residency program for currently practicing general dentists interested in learning more about children's oral health.

The program will include continuing education courses in oral health for pediatric and family medicine residents and UnitedHealth Group Medicaid network physicians in the state, to teach them how to recognize warning signs of dental conditions in children.

Details of the grant, likely in the range of $160,000 to $200,000, still are being worked out, but a memorandum of understanding signed Wednesday states that the case manager will be hired as soon as possible, and the other programs will begin this year.

The effort is a way to reach children immediately while lawmakers in Congress and on the local level wrangle over legislative solutions, said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings.

Cummings, a Baltimore Democrat who brought the company and dental school together, has been pushing the issue in Congress since Deamonte died of an untreated tooth infection that spread to his brain. Tooth decay is one of the most common chronic infections among American children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal lawmakers are waging a war with President Bush over children's health, since he has vowed to veto expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

"This agreement is just the beginning of what I anticipate to be a long-term commitment," Cummings said.

Dr. Allen Finkelstein, chief dental officer at AmeriChoice, said the dental school initiative will not end at just one year of funding.

The hope is other companies will follow in the footsteps of UnitedHealth Group, which supports community dentistry programs throughout the country and similar efforts at other dental schools. Last year, the Minnesota-based company's foundation spent $16 million on outreach.

"I hope they outdo us," Finkelstein said of other firms. "I hope partners will come in and say, 'Look what United did.'"

The dental school's pediatric dentistry clinic, run by Dr. Norman Tinanoff, who chairs the school's health promotion and policy department, sees 17,000 children each year, 90 percent of whom are Medicaid beneficiaries.

The remaining patients either have private insurance or pay out- of-pocket for care from dental students and faculty -- and some don't pay at all.

"Any patient who has a toothache will get treated," Tinanoff said.

But even for patients with Medicaid, getting dental care can be a challenge. Medicaid reimburses for dental services at a rate that is less than half what private insurance pays, prompting many private practitioners to opt out of participating in the program, Tinanoff said.

The dental school's clinics make it the largest single provider of oral health care in the state.

The AmeriChoice/UnitedHealth funding will cover programs aimed at bringing dental students, practicing dentists and even doctors of medicine closer to the core issues of oral health for the low income and under-insured or uninsured, Tinanoff added.

Educating pediatricians and family practitioners on warning signs of oral health issues as simple as cavities can save lives, Finkelstein said. And the school will graduate generations of dentists with community outreach on their minds.

"How about getting back to basics, back to the preventive mode?" Finkelstein said.