DQA Improvement Resources

The DQA is participating in this collaborative effort to improve existing systems of care in support of a quality improvement, patient-centered approach that addresses comprehensive oral health care of maternal and child health populations. The DQA is responsible for goal 2 of the project – establish a set of MCH oral health quality indicators to monitor services delivered in public health programs and systems of care. A quality indicator advisory taskforce was selected by the DQA to assist in this effort by guiding the work required to achieve goal 2. This four year cooperative agreement is funded by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

Following are the DQA-led deliverables and accomplishments for the COHSII project thus far:

2017 – 2018

• Report – Oral Health Quality Improvement for the Maternal and Child Health Population: Identifying a Set of Quality Indicators
• Environmental Scan – Oral Health Quality Indicators for the Maternal and Child Health Population
• Quality Indicator Summary – Oral Health Quality Indicators for the Maternal and Child Health Population

2018 – 2019

• User’s Guide – Oral Health Quality Indicators for the Maternal and Child Health Population (Release Date July 2019)
• Summary – Oral Health Quality Indicators for the Maternal and Child Health Population: Year 1 Pilot Summary (Release Date August 2019)

State Participants: Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Rhode Island

Quality Indicator Advisory Taskforce

• James J. Crall (Chair), UCLA, representing Dental Quality Alliance
• Krishna Aravamudhan, American Dental Association and Dental Quality Alliance
• Lauren Barone, American Academy of Pediatrics
• Natalia Chalmers, Food and Drug Administration
• William Kohn, Delta Dental Plans Association
• Colleen Lampron, AFL Enterprises, representing National Network for Oral Health Access
• Hyewon Lee, DentaQuest Institute
• Andrea Palmer, Division of Maternal, Child, and Family Health Services, Illinois Department of Health
• Kathy Phipps, Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors

The DQA has also launched a state-level learning collaborative model to further promote system-wide improvement. This pilot brings together key stakeholders in oral health and is designed to impact system-level improvement at the state-level for Medicaid beneficiaries. Participating state include: Kansas, Missouri, and Ohio.

For additional information on this learning collaborative, please access the resources below. The DQA MeQILA project team can also be contacted at DQA@ada.org.

• Medicaid Quality Improvement Learning Academy (MeQILA) infographic
• State Curriculum Framework and Timeline
• MeQILA Expert Faculty and Consultants

To support system-wide improvement, the DQA has conducted an environmental scan to identify projects that could be used as exemplars of quality improvement. The projects highlighted through the Quality Innovators Spotlight series are shown sorted by Program, Plan or Practice/Community level improvement below.

• SmileConnect®, an Altarum program
• Virginia Oral Health Learning Collaborative

• Preventistry^SM

• Early Childhood Caries Collaborative Project
• UCLA’s First 5 L.A. 21st Century Community Dental Homes Project
• Personalized Care: Caries Risk Assessment
• Opioid Prescription Reduction
• NNOHA (National Network for Oral Health Access) Dashboard Collaborative
• Marshfield Clinic Health System - Dental Quality Improvement Initiative