South Carolina Primary Health Care Association
3 Technology Circle
Columbia, SC
United States
The South Carolina Primary Health Care Association (SCPHA) is the state’s primary care association that provides a unified supportive infrastructure that facilitates access to community-based primary, behavioral and other health care services to every community in South Carolina.
Our historic work with the SCPHA only goes back to 2020, in which they implemented the first phase of this oral health value-based care readiness building project. Despite COVID-19, they were able to bring together a cohort of FQHCs to build consensus around three standardized dental outcomes measures and begin implementing collecting data on 1) caries risk assessment 2) elevated risk for caries and 3) caries at recall. As a result of this work, three FQHCs have expanded their use of caries risk assessment to their adult population and begun documenting the diagnosis of caries into patient charts.
With this proposal, they plan to enter phase 2 of this work, which focuses on bringing more FQHCs to the table to begin implementing the three identified outcomes measures, with the potential to build consensus around 3 new outcomes measures to pilot.
This proposal entails a critical phase in this project whereby the SCPHCA begins to have the beginnings of a “critical mass” of FQHCs collecting dental outcomes and diagnosis measures, which is intended to create future opportunities to examine population health data and explore the cost analysis of alternative payment models. Once they begin operating with a critical mass of data, they will work to integrate these measures into the state Health Information Exchange for sustainability and further spread.
This project adds value to the CareQuest Institute in that it strengthens our advancement of opportunities for new payment models focused on value, while deepening our understanding of the role HIT can play in advancing OHVBC strategies.
The budget for this proposal is $85,800, which primarily goes to stipends for new FQHCs to be able to engage in this cohort. SCPHCA has secured matching funding from another source that will support the entirety of their staff time to commit to this project.