ADA DERE: Frequently Asked Questions

• Dental practices of any size from across the country can participate in DERE. Participants need not be members of the American Dental Association.
• Currently, a participating practice must use an Open Dental Practice Management System at Version 19.3 or higher. Practices must agree to the terms of the Agreement (See Enrollment Checklist).

No, there is no cost to enroll your practice or run analytics or reports.

We invite you to provide your contact information to stay updated on future integrations.

You will be able to view information about your practice’s patient data at an aggregate level. You will be able to filter your reports down by provider and location. The portal also has benchmarking functionality that will allow you to compare your reports at the national, regional and state level. This feature will be available at a later date.

The personalized dashboard includes reports on specific quality measures that help a participating dental practice to:

• Understand the completeness of patient records
• Assess the practice’s procedure and population profiles
• Assess the practice’s dental caries and periodontal disease prevention and disease management profile
• Assess average charges and net revenue (after adjustments) per patient.

The ADA has selected specific quality measures based on an evaluation of evidence of their validity and reliability in the context of dental practice performance assessment. Examples of these quality measure reports include: Of those patients whose records indicate they have diabetes, how many received follow-up dental care (evaluation or periodontal treatment procedure), and of those patients whose records identify them as at elevated risk for caries, how many received fluoride varnish at least twice per year. Generating a report is dependent on specific data elements from your Practice Management System.

At this time, utility is limited to the Reports defined. However, should you have a specific report request, we encourage you to email cdr@ada.org for future consideration.

Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. To ensure optimal compatibility with DERE, we recommend updating to a browser’s latest version. Please note: Internet Explorer is NOT compatible.

At this time, DERE is mobile and tablet supported and will automatically adjust to the screen it’s displayed on. However, a mobile application of DERE does not currently exist. For best experience, it is recommended you access your DERE account from a computer browser.

A Referral Code is a unique combination of letters and numbers issued to your practice allowing users you authorize to view and access your practice data. Your Referral Code may be copied and shared with colleagues as you see fit. Ensure only appropriate parties have access to the Referral Code. Only approve an appropriate user who is requesting access by confirming both the Referral Code and the user. Your practice is solely responsible for protecting and issuing the generated Referral Code, and for approving and disabling users when appropriate.

There are two different user roles available in DERE:

1. Practice Administrator: A Practice Administrator is the person who can enroll a practice into DERE. Only a Practice Administrator can edit the practice’s details (location, etc.) and register Providers. Only a Practice Administrator can invite and approve Users to join their practice’s DERE dashboard. Only a Practice Administrator can disable Users from their practice’s DERE dashboard. A dental practice can have more than one Practice Administrator.
2. User: A User is invited to join a practice by a Practice Administrator through an invite email, or by requesting to join a practice by Referral Code. Users can view/print reports, view Registered Providers and view other Users in the practice they belong to. Users do NOT have the ability to edit or add any practice information for the practice they belong to or register Providers.

Note: A Practice Administrator may promote a User to the role of fellow Practice Administrator. Once promoted, this action cannot be undone by a Practice Administrator. For more information, please contact cdr@ada.org.

A patient list is a .csv file available within specific reports containing limited information about a practice’s patients. Limited information includes a patient’s age as of the report generation date, and the last date the patient received a service in that practice. The practice may use this information to help identify patients for recall for quality improvement purposes. Only Practice Administrators can download a patient list.

Patient Lists are available to Practice Administrators for the following DERE reports:

• Continuation of Care within Practice
• Recall Compliance: Patients with Implant/Tooth-borne Restorations/Prosthesis
• Advancing Severity of Care Rates (Restorations Following Sealant Placement)
• Advancing Severity of Care Rates (Crown/Partials/Endodontic or Extractions Following Restorations Placement)
• Advancing Severity of Care Rates (Extractions Following Crowns/Endodontic Treatment)
• Topical Fluoride Application
• Sealant on Permanent First Molar by Age 10
• Sealant on Permanent Second Molar by Age 15
• New Caries at Recall
• Care for People with Diabetes
• Care for People with Periodontitis
• Periodontal Condition: Based on Treatment History

Example: Patient A is seen in the practice on 4/5/2020 for topical fluoride when they are 65 years old. Patient A is then seen again in the practice that same year for a root canal on 12/2/2020, one day before their 66th birthday. When the Practice Administrator runs the DERE Topical Fluoride Application report for patients on 12/17/2020, the Patient List .csv file will reflect Patient A as a 66 year old (as of the date of download) with a last visit date (for any type of procedure) of 12/2/2020.

Find full technical specifications for DERE reports in this Report Specifications (PDF).

You and users you approve will have access. Reports generated by practices will use aggregate counts of patient data so patients will NOT be identified.

• DERE accounts are protected by 2-step authentication, as well as other security measures designed to help protect them from unauthorized use and outside attacks.
• Account users must take steps to restrict unauthorized access as well, such as securing sign in information (username and passphrase) and a practice's Referral Code.

2-step authentication is a security process used to help protect DERE accounts from unauthorized access and outside attacks. The first step is to enter your sign in information. The second step is to enter a verification code sent to you. Entering the correct verification code allows access to your DERE account. When signing up for the first time or when changing your passphrase, you will be required to verify by mobile phone and by email before accessing your account.

To help safeguard against security risks, please make sure to use reasonable security safeguards, such as:

• Only allowing individuals that are authorized by the practice to access the practice’s DERE platform
• Not sharing any sign in credentials
• Immediately resetting your passphrase if you did not just attempt to access your account but receive a verification code text or email from DERE
• Promptly contacting cdr@ada.org to transfer or deactivate DERE credentials whenever any individual’s access is no longer appropriate.

Any change of dental practice ownership, such as a merger, sale or acquisition of any TIN or location within the practice must be promptly sent to ADA in writing by contacting cdr@ada.org.

Any changes to the Practice Management System’s software versions, and any suspected or actual data quality or integrity issues, must be promptly sent to ADA in writing by contacting cdr@ada.org.

Participation in the DERE involves permitting the ADA Clinical Data Warehouse — a protected, cloud based repository — to connect with your dental practice’s Practice Management System software’s Application Programming Interface (API). An API is a computing interface which defines interactions between multiple software intermediaries. Additional data about participating practices and their providers is also collected from the practice management system during and after enrollment. Once API connection is successfully established, data will automatically refresh every 2 weeks.

• ADA will use the data generated from participating dental practices to support development of quality measures, evidence-based guidelines, healthcare policies and clinical decision support tools.
• In addition, researchers approved and granted access by the ADA are permitted to access data through the ADA Research Portal for research purposes only. Practice and provider data will be protected and made available for research when sufficient data exists in the system.

The ADA Clinical Data Warehouse periodically accesses electronic Protected Health Information (“ePHI”) from participating dental practices' Practice Management Systems, and extracts, collects and stores a Limited Data Set (LDS) of ePHI. An LDS, as defined in the HIPAA Privacy Rule, is partially de-identified Protected Health Information (PHI). HIPAA permits the use and disclosure of an LDS without patient authorization if certain conditions are met.

Examples of the patient identifiers that may be included in an LDS are:

• Dates of service
• Zip code

Identifiers not permitted in an LDS will be automatically rejected by the system and not stored. Examples of patient identifiers that will not be included in the LDS include:

• Patient names
• Mailing addresses
• Email addresses
• Telephone numbers

As we are only working with an LDS of patient information (see “What data will be accessed and extracted from my Practice Management System?” above), any identifiers not permitted in an LDS will be rejected and NOT stored. Security measures are in place to protect the information contained in the ADA Clinical Data Warehouse.

This token will only apply to practices that use Open Dental Practice Management System software. As part of the practice enrollment process, a token is required to be generated by Open Dental to activate the software’s data exchange. The use of this token is a one-time step to establish connection between your system and DERE. The activation process of creating this token can take up to 48 hours. When the token is available for the Practice Administrator, a notification will appear on their DERE practice dashboard with the token and instructions on what to do next to complete activation.

An eConnector enables Open Dental users to facilitate connection and successful data ingestion between the Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) API and Open Dental's API. A practice using Open Dental software must ensure their eConnector is enabled and the status is set to “Working”.

Please note: Enabling your eConnector within your Open Dental Software will not result in any Open Dental subscription changes or charges.

Detailed information regarding your Open Dental eConnector can be found within the Open Dental Software Manual under eServices.

Once an Open Dental token is successfully used, practice data will become available on your customized dashboard within 1 week.

The Data Reconciliation tab is a feature for Practice Administrators (PA) to manage their data stored within ADA DERE. This feature allows PAs to manage their data source items (Location(s) and Provider(s)) and reconcile any discrepancies between the information registered within the ADA DERE portal during enrollment workflow and those found in their Practice Management System (PMS).

Data Reconciliation begins with automatic reconciliation and the system attempting to intelligently match data where possible.

However, there may be scenarios where further review is needed in order to successfully reconcile an item. When this is the case, a red notification icon (!) will display and the unmatched discrepancies will be listed, alerting the PA to perform a simple process of matching.

A detailed guide on Data Reconciliation is available within the DERE dashboard’s Data Reconciliation tab.

Data will be extracted and refreshed through your DERE connection every two weeks between the hours of 10 p.m. – 6 a.m. EST and should not cause any interruptions to your Practice Management System. If you believe an interruption has taken place, please promptly contact cdr@ada.org.

The ADA Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW) is a protected cloud-based repository that accesses electronic Protected Health Information in participating dental practices’ Practice Data Systems, and extracts, collects and stores a Limited Data Set of protected health information.

The Dental Experience and Research Exchange (DERE) is the official name for the ADA’s Clinical Data Registry or “Registry Initiative.” ADA DERE is the trademarked name for the ADA’s Clinical Data Registry.

The Agreement to participate in DERE is made up of a Participation Agreement, Business Associate Agreement and Data Use Agreement.

A dashboard is a personalized view of accessibility and features within a practice while inside the portal.

Enrollment is the process a practice will complete during onboarding of their practice and providers.

DERE allows dental practices to submit data directly from the practice’s electronic health record and Practice Management Systems, collectively Practice Data Systems. Within DERE, Practice Management System(s) is used interchangeably with Practice Data Systems.

Each participating dental practice will have access to a custom data portal that the practice can use to view a dashboard with reports for certain specific automated queries.

Any and all providers whose National Provider Identification Number (“NPI” or “NPI Number”) is entered into the ADA CDW as a result of practice’s participation in DERE. This applies to both dentist and non-dentist providers, and includes, but is not limited to, past or current owners, partners, employees, independent contractors, locum tenens, or associates.

A Referral Code is a unique combination of letters and numbers issued to your practice allowing users you authorize to view and access your practice data.

A provider affiliated with the practice when the practice begins to participate in the DERE, or who becomes affiliated with the practice thereafter and data about whom (e.g., graduation year and specialty) practice has entered into the ADA CDW.

Verification codes are codes used to authenticate a user during 2-Step authentication. Verification codes can only be used one time and expire 30 minutes after being issued.