WCHQ News Releases

‍Dental Associates will be among the first dental practices in the nation to publicly report oral health quality measures

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Dental Associates has joined the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality (WCHQ), an organization dedicated to helping health care professionals improve the quality and affordability of care through collaboration and public reporting. Dental Associates will be among the first dental practices in the nation to publicly report a set of metrics specifically designed for oral health.

Dental Associates joins ForwardDental and the dental practices based in Marshfield Clinic Health System, Health Partners (MN), and Children’s Hospital Health System as WCHQ members. WCHQ has formed one of the first regional oral health collaboratives in the country.

“WCHQ has proven that ‘what gets measured and reported publicly, improves faster,’” according to WCHQ President/CEO Chris Queram. “We are pleased to welcome Dental Associates to the Collaborative. It is exciting to see dentists work with our organization and join physician practices and health systems to set a new standard of overall, holistic care. Our goal is to see a closer alignment between oral and medical health providers in our state because a number of serious health issues must be managed in both settings.”

Thomas Manos, DDS, MS, is owner and President of Dental Associates. Dental Associates has 14 locations in Wisconsin and is accredited by the Accreditation Association of Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC).

Collecting data and using it to improve quality is not new to Dental Associates. A data-driven and patient-centric practice, Dr. Manos said they are looking forward to working with WCHQ as a partner to help create a starter set of quality metrics related to oral health.

“There is a critical link between oral health and general health and well-being. We know poor dental hygiene is linked to an increase in chronic and acute diseases,” according to Dr. Manos. “We are looking forward to working with our colleagues in both the medical and oral health communities to improve the overall health of the people we all serve.”  

Queram said the oral health collaborative members are currently developing a starter set of measures that are reliable and useful for benchmarking clinical performance in dental practice settings. The practices will then collect and send data to WCHQ. The Collaborative’s goal is to align the oral health measures to specific processes that are common to all dental offices to benchmark performance. In 2020, dental organizations will begin to publicly report their progress on WCHQ.org. The initial set of dental metrics will focus on preventive services for patients under the age of 18, as well as the identification and treatment of periodontal disease.

Established in 2003, the Wisconsin Collaborative for Healthcare Quality is a voluntary, non-profit consortium of organizations committed to publicly reporting comparative measures of performance to catalyze improvements in the quality and affordability of health care in our state.

‍Dental Associates provides comprehensive dental care at 14 locations in Wisconsin. It is an AAAHC (Accreditation Association of Ambulatory Health Care) accredited organization comprised of over 800 individuals.  Dental Associates’ goal is to make dental care accessible, affordable and individualized to help create healthier Wisconsin communities.  

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