The Wisconsin Dental Association (WDA) has joined with seven other organizations to form the Healthy Choices Coalition, a group dedicated to helping reduce barriers to oral healthcare.
Coalition members -- who represent more than 119,000 Wisconsinites and serve local families, children, individuals living with disabilities and illnesses, older adults, and others -- announced that they will work with state leaders to implement WDA's Healthy Choices plan to ensure all have access to proper dental care.
The WDA Healthy Choices plan includes ideas to help close the gap between the number of low-income Wisconsinites who need dental care and their ability to easily access that care. This fall, WDA is working with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on two pieces of Healthy Choices legislation with minimal fiscal impact on the state budget.
One measure would allow doctors of oral health to delegate more procedures to educated and certified Expanded Function Dental Auxiliaries under their supervision, thereby increasing dentists' ability to treat more people while maintaining quality of care, according to the WDA.
The second would prohibit dental plans from setting fees for services not reimbursed by the dental plan, ensuring that treatment decisions would be made by patients and their dentists without third-party interference. Twenty-six states have already adopted similar legislation.
In addition to WDA, members of the Healthy Choices Coalition include the following:
- AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin
- Alzheimer's and Dementia Alliance of Wisconsin
- Community Living Alliance, which provides support and healthcare services for people with disabilities in Dane County
- Independence First, which serves the needs of people with disabilities, primarily in metro Milwaukee
- Rehabilitation for Wisconsin, which helps people with disabilities and economic disadvantages throughout the state
- Wisconsin Assisted Living Association, the state's premier assisted living association that promotes standards of quality care and serves organizations that provide assisted living services to older adults.
- Wisconsin Council on Children and Families, a Madison group dedicated to improving conditions for the state's families and youth
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