Maine Primary Care Association
73 Winthrop Street
Augusta, ME
United States
This investment provides support to the Maine Primary Care Association (MEPCA) advance the operationalizing of oral health value-based metrics, expand capacity and use of interoperability, and strengthen the use of population health management techniques in the Maine safety net.
Historically, our relationship with MEPCA has primarily been through stipend support for their participation in the National Oral Health Innovation and Integration Network (NOHIIN) as a member PCA. 2020 was the first significant grant that was made to MEPCA, and like other PCAs, their intended work was upended by COVID, however they played a strong leadership role over the course of the year and were very collaborative with DQP.
With this investment, MEPCA will convene a cohort of 4 FQHCs and facilitate their implementing a series of adult preventative dental codes to demonstrate outcomes in the delivery of prevention, education, and completion of treatment codes, which currently does not have codes or funding in the state Medicaid program. A critical part of this will be supporting the growth of infrastructure related to the HIT needs to track oral health outcomes in adults, while also doing specific analysis around targeted populations such diabetics, patients with cardiovascular disease, and pregnant women. Additionally, MEPCA will implement an adult oral health assessment on the medical side of these PCAs to begin tracking population health measures for the aforementioned populations as well. Lastly, as a culminating piece of their work, they will distill their work and learnings into an implementation guide that can be leveraged to support capacity building in the broader Maine safety net.
The total request is for $99,183 and predominantly goes to staff time for completion of the project as well as $12k to cover the cost of stipends for FQHCs to participate in the learning collaborative.