ADA Launches Data-Driven DERE Program

The American Dental Association (ADA) is a professional membership organization that promotes better oral health by advancing dentistry. It supports dentists through credentialing tools, continuing education opportunities, and clinical resources.

Founded in 1859, ADA leads advocacy efforts for oral health in the United States. It is committed to improving dental care through evidence-based methods and policy reform. In 2021, ADA lobbied for the inclusion of dental benefits in Medicare, with a special focus on low-income seniors.

To fulfill its mission, ADA provides its members with educational and clinical programs to advance their careers and boost patient care. For example, ADA offers online continuing education courses that tackle key topics, including implantology, restorative dentistry, and practice management.

ADA organizes licensure exams for aspiring dentists. It developed the Dental Licensure Objective Structured Clinical Examination (DLOSCE) in June 2020. State boards of dentistry use the exam to assess the clinical knowledge and skills of licensure candidates. Compared to its predecessors, the exam relies on 3D models rather than actual patients, making it a safe and ethical form of assessment.

Additionally, the ADA Science and Research Institute, LLC makes valuable contributions to dentistry standards and formulates evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. These important accomplishments help dentists enhance their clinical decision-making process. However, such standards are traditionally relayed to dentists in a unidirectional format.

Aiming to advance the dentistry field furthermore interactively, ADA created a data-driven program targeting dental practices. In July of 2021, ADA established its Dental Experience and Research Exchange, or DERE, program to improve patient outcomes through better data exchange.

The DERE program functions as an outcomes assessment program involving research and reporting between dentists. The first of its kind in dentistry, DERE aims to collect data from dentistry practices to establish a comprehensive database that guides future clinical decisions.

The database covers clinical information and dental findings. The long-term aggregation of collected data generates patterns that are analyzed to improve treatment strategies and overall patient outcomes.

Dental practices that use the Open Dental Version 19.3 or higher can participate in the DERE program. Enrollment is free of charge. Participating practices connect to ADA’s Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW), a cloud-based platform that collects participants’ data upon enrolling in the program.

After successful connection, the CDW extracts clinical data from the practice’s management system directly. All practice and patient data is protected and stored safely on the platform. CDW conducts full data analysis and creates a customized data portal accordingly.

Dental practices gain access to the portal through their personalized dashboard. Practices use their dashboards to review and check the latest data. The generated data trends are available in reports discussing patient population profiles, disease management, and net revenue per patient. By applying data findings to their practice, dentists can develop the appropriate tactics for better patient care.

As more dental practices participate, CDW analyzes and aggregates more data. The growth of a database facilitates the development of evidence-based guidelines and effective healthcare policies. At this stage, practices can compare their performance to other participating practices, enabling them to learn and improve cyclically.