Value-based oral health care model helps dentists nd footing post COVID

By Delta Dental

Dr. Mi elle Kohler knows a little appreciation can go a long way.

e director of quality improvement and population health management at Delta Dental of Mi igan and her team recently nished writing bonus e s to dentists who served vulnerable ildren in their communities this past year.

Dr. Michelle Kohler

In 2022, Kohler and her team worked at the request of the Mi igan Department of Health and Human Services to implement a value-based payment (VBP) program to increase utilization of the Healthy Kids Dental (HKD) bene t. Delta Dental ose to focus on Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, a region with a signi cant number of HKD members and low rates of dental visits.

“It was an important project for us. e timing was important because the dental profession has struggled with COVID-19. ere were retirements and some practices didn’t reopen,” Kohler said.

HKD is the dental bene t available to ildren who have Medicaid coverage and are under the age of 21. As part of the VBP initiative, Delta Dental’s goal was to increase access to care in that region by at least 1%.

Delta Dental exceeded that goal — it increased utilization by 4.9% over 12 months and paid out $1.37 million in bonus payments to dentists in the tri-county area. Of the more than 1,000 dentists who participated, bonuses ranged from $25 to $84,000. gage-backed securities. So you had this sort of capital machine that was subsidizing multifamily transactions. And as rates rose over the last six, nine months, that spigot has shut o quite substantially, and there’s been a signi cant decline in the volume of transactions over the last six months.” e rent growth nationwide seen in the last couple years is expected to slow and the gulf between seller price expectations and those of buyers remains large.

Most importantly, more than 196,000 ildren received essential oral health care — a noteworthy a ievement since, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tooth decay is one of the most common ronic diseases in ildhood.

If le untreated, cavities can cause infections or lead to problems with eating and speaking. In addition, ildren with poor oral health o en miss more s ool and receive lower grades than ildren with access to regular dental care.

Value-based care programs maintain high-quality patient care and improve health outcomes.

Moreover, Kohler emphasized the intent of these programs is to reward providers for quality and timely preventive services that decrease the need for expensive treatments down the road.

“ is project was a great way to encourage providers to get ba on tra and reward them for their work seeing this underserved population,” Kohler said.

According to Marcus & Millichap Inc., a California-based real estate rm with a local o ce in South eld, the multifamily market more broadly faces headwinds from a number of directions, ranging from increased interest rates tamping down investment activity to a backlog of new supply hitting the market last year.

But still, in Detroit, rent has increased more than 30 percent from 2019 to present, according to a 2023 multifamily outlook report prepared by Marcus & Millichap, rising from $1,059 to an anticipated $1,300 this year. Purchase prices continued to creep upward during the pandemic, rising from an average of $91,200 per unit in 2020 to $118,100 per unit last year, according to Marcus & Millichap.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

GENERAL CONTRACTORS CRAIN'S LIST |

Ranked by 2022 revenue

ResearchedbySonyaD.Hill:shill@crain.com

|ThislistofgeneralcontractorsisacompilationofthelargestsuchcompaniesinWayne,Oakland,Macomb,WashtenawandLivingstoncounties.Itisnotacompletelistingbutthemost comprehensiveavailable.Crain'sestimatesarebasedonindustryanalysesandbenchmarks,newsreportsandawiderangeofothersources.Unlessotherwisenoted,informationwasprovidedbythecompanies.Companieswithheadquarters elsewherearelistedwiththeaddressandtopexecutiveoftheirmainSoutheastMichigano ce.MarshConstruction(T.H.Marsh),whichwasNo.25onlastyear’slistwasnotincludedonthelistbecauseit ledforChapter7liquidationinAugust2022. NA = not available.NOTES: e. Crain's estimate.

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