The second meeting of the year was held Thursday, 11/9 and it was another "marathon". You can read the minutes of the meeting on the website for the state society at www.nhds.org.
The biggest issue of the night was the
new "state legislature mandated" dental materials "fact" sheet. By
statute, we're supposed to be counseling all patients regarding the
dental materials we use and giving them the brochure they created.
The old brochure was, I thought, pretty accurate.
But certain members of the State's Health
and Human Services committee (stimulated by outside activists) thought
the brochure wasn't strong enough in its warning about dental amalgam.
This of course, is the real issue behind the brochure in the first
place - anti-amalgamism - which is obvious when reading the new brochure.
The new brochure was created by a committee
of members of the Department of Environmental Services, HHS, the Board
of Dental Examiners and a representative of the dental society. (What's
that saying - a camel is a horse created by a committee?) The
finger prints of anti-amalgam forces are all over the new brochure.
Certain inflammatory and factually debatable
phrases are included in the new brochure. The three most notable are
the use of the title "mercury fillings", the bogus claim of potential
health risk to "mothers of child bearing age and children under six" and "environmental" concerns.
No mention is made of any risks of other restorative materials.
The brochure was debated long and hard.
The members from the BODE and NHDS did their best to make it accurate,
but certain phrases were mandated by the legislature through the HHS.
After a long debate of our own, the BOT of the NHDS agreed to put our
name on the brochure as having "acknowledged" it. We felt that if we
refused to allow our name to be used, we wouldn't be included in the
committee for the inevitable next re-write.
A second "hot" issue is "pay for performance".
This is an initiative from the US Department of Health. It is an attempt
to provide "standardization" of medical and dental healthcare delivery
in the US. I can't speak expertly on this monstrous topic, but basically
it is felt that there is a disconnect among healthcare providers' treatment,
treatment outcomes and cost. I think DOH would like to tie medical
payments through third party payers to treatment outcomes as determined
by patient satisfaction and probably other measures. I'm sure it is
an issue with consumers, but I think trying to create "standards
of care" will be daunting at best.
Terry Bradigan