Advocacy
Standing Up For Our Patients' Health
Our advocacy efforts focus on safely increasing access to care for our patients.
NATIONAL LEGISLATION OF INTEREST
- HR 3380- Heads Up Act: This would designate people who have special healthcare needs as a medically underserved population. This would increase access to care for this population. Currently Dr. Brooke does NOT qualify for the National Health Service Corps because this population is not designated as an MUP and our practice focuses on this population. Dr. Brooke loses $10,000 per year in loan repayment opportunities because she chooses to focus on this population. This act would enable providers like Dr. Brooke to qualify for loan repayment in programs like the National Health Service Corps. It would also help this population qualify for other grants and funding opportunities. Currently people who have disabilities are not officially recognized as an underserved population. Clearly the are an underserved population. Click HERE to read this Act. Anyone can help with this. Contact your national leaders and make them aware of this important bill.
- We do NOT support any regulations that increase administrative burden on providers accepting Medicaid as payment.
- We do NOT support restrictions on funding that exclude adult patients who have disabilities.
IDAHO LEGISLATION OF INTEREST:
- Stay Tuned as we learn more about what is happening in the legislature this year. In general
- We support increased wages for caregivers and direct support providers. This is a very important and underpaid position. Please inform us if there is any legislation that can help support direct support providers/caregivers.
- We support systems that consider medical and behavioral complexity when looking at supervisory levels of healthcare team members regarding invasive treatments.
- We support systems that enable adult patients who are not their own POA/Healthcare decision makers to receive the same benefits as children when applicable. Specifically we believe that the EPSDT benefits should extend until the patient is granted the rights and responsibilities of making their own healthcare decisions. Currently, a 20 year old who lives on their own, works a full time job, and has a family is able to receive "child" benefits and a 24 year old who has extensive disabilities, requires 24 hour care, and lives with their parents is not. These benefits should be granted or denied on a case by case basis after whatever age is determined to be appropriate to to no longer be considered a "child" in the eyes of the system. Cutting off benefits, such as root canal and crown coverage, solely based on the person turning 21 years old is inappropriate in this population.
- We support increased reimbursement rates for adult patients who have disabilities in Idaho. In Idaho Medicaid pays dentists less than it costs to provide the services. This makes it hard for dentists to accept this form of payment.
- We support decreasing administrative burden in the Medicaid System both in Idaho and on a National Level. There are rules with Medicaid that make it harder and more expensive to practice. Very few dentists accept Medicaid because it takes too much time and effort to participate and the pay rates are lower than the cost of delivering care.
- We support open and clear communication among all stakeholders in the Medicaid system consisting of, but not limited to: The Idaho State Dental Association, the Department of Health And Welfare, The Third Party Contractor, and the Legislative committee charged with managing this.