Hygiene students, dental assistants and caregivers are hired to serve as oral hygiene leaders in group home facilities. They help caregivers improve their skills with oral care by serving as knowledgeable leaders. This is not a replacement for the standard oral care. It supplements by providing leadership, improving caregivers skills, serving as a regular reminder of the importance of oral care, providing an accountability documentation system (can be found on our handouts page) and sometimes incentivizing caregivers to more actively participate in oral care. Our assisted oral hygiene professionals also provide excellent hand's on oral oral care at a minimum of once per week per participant. 

 

This is was piloted with a few residents in both DeSano Place and Creekside in Jerome, ID. It was made possible by a HRSA grant that ran between 2019-2022.  COVID-19 put a damper on fulfilling our sustainability plan in the time allotted. Our grant terminates September 2022. At this point, we are looking for organizations to help us sustain the program for those residents currently receiving the services. We have seen much improvement in their oral health through this program and we do not want to see them decline if we lack the funding to continue providing these services. 

 

Dr. Brooke believes in this program so much that she does not take any personal pay for her work with this program. Any pay she "receives" with this program she donates 100% back to the program.  The money for the program goes to paying the Assisted Oral Hygiene/ Guided Oral Hygiene Providers, for PPE, insurances, equipment, subscriptions, education, and for supplies and needed. 

 

This program is the best thing our practice has done for community health, but it unfortunately will be the least funded once the grant ends in September.

 

The Idaho Health Care Association Foundation also saw this program to be valuable and has partnered with us in a new pilot program. With this program, we will solicit tax deductible donations from businesses, service organizations, and private donors to keep the program running. Really ANYONE can donate and no amount is too little.  It is an expensive program to run. To offer the service for the entire year for 20 residents costs us over $60,000.  For more program information and costs of the program click HERE.

 

If you or your business would like to help, Click HERE .  Any amount helps. We have the oral care part figured out. We are still working on documentation and sustainability. Once we have those things figured out, plan to share the model with dental practices across the nation so this model can help residents everywhere. This has been the best thing our practice has done and has great potential. Please consider helping us financially so we can keep it going.