Back on November 21, House Human Services Committee Chairman Richard Peña Raymond held a meeting with a select group of dental providers regarding dental managed care issues.
Providers requested meeting
The meeting was initially requested by South Texas Dental but was expanded to include other dental groups and the Texas Dental Association which were invited through Raymond’s office. Also in attendance were representatives from the Texas Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, HHSC, and HHSC-OIG. The meeting was held in Austin at the Capitol.
The primary motivation for the meeting was Main Dental Home assignments which have been an ongoing issue since the requirement was implemented in 2012. The other primary provider concern was alternative payment models, particularly capitation as approved by HHSC and tested by DentaQuest earlier in the year.
TDA had a memorandum
At the meeting, the TDA brought a memorandum, the final version shown below, which contains 18 issues that ended up being used as the agenda for the meeting. This was considered unfortunate by at least one attendee TDMR talked to who wanted to see the focus spent more on the main provider issues, not the overall agenda of the TDA.
HHSC agreed to receive feedback on APMs
The key takeaway from the meeting was that Chair Raymond got the representatives from HHSC to agree to receive suggestions and feedback from the providers on alternative payment models besides capitation.
The TDA sent a memo around to all the attendees after the meeting with their input. This is also shown below.
Final TDA memorandum 21 November
TDA Memo 6 December