Physicians, dentists collaborate on oral health

A shortage of dentists has led to some physicians providing preventive dental care for their patients.

By Damon Adams, AMNews staff. Dec. 1, 2003.

Deborah Harper, MD, lives in a community with no water fluoridation. At her practice in Spokane, Wash., the pediatrician sees children with teeth rotting to the gum line.

Under these circumstances, she won't turn her back on a row of teeth, so she checks for tooth decay in her patients and shows them how to properly use a toothbrush. If need be, she refers them to a dentist.

Dr. Harper isn't seeking to take the place of dentists; instead, she wants to be their partner. In a new push across the country, physicians and dentists are working together to address oral health problems, to provide basic dental care to those who would not get it otherwise, and to combat a shortage of dentists.

Physicians are no longer giving their patients' teeth the brush-off.

National groups such as the American Academy of Family Physicians want physicians to team with dentists. In North Carolina and Washington, family doctors and pediatricians do fluoride varnishes and oral assessments for children. In Maine, a family medicine residency teaches doctors to handle emergency dental care.

"I'm just identifying problems. I'm really good at finding cavities," Dr. Harper said. "I'm in their mouth anyway, so it doesn't take me any more time."

Doctors and dentists agree the partnership is needed.

Tooth decay is the most common chronic childhood disease, according to a spring 2003 report by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.

In 2000, the first Surgeon General's report on oral health cited a "silent epidemic" of dental and oral diseases and called for health professions to work jointly to improve the nation's oral health.