While the Omicron variant has changed a lot of plans over the last couple of months, signs are pointing toward a downward trend of positive cases and an ever so slight decline in hospitalizations. Despite this trend, we must remain vigilant, because while the trend is going down, a lot of people will continue to become sick.
Today marks day 10 of the legislative session…only 80 more to go! On Tuesday we will be testifying at our first hearing of the session before the Senate Finance Committee on the bill to add dental coverage to Adult Medicaid. SB 150 is an important bill to improve access to care, but with the understanding that reimbursements must be at a level to encourage providers to accept patients in the program. Dentists provide millions of dollars in donated dental care every year, but a dentist can only provide so much. The State must be able to make the program work for both patients and providers.
As hearings begin to really get underway and bills continue to be submitted, it can only mean one thing…Dentist Day is just around the corner. We have our first pre-Dentist Day webinar THIS MONDAY, JAN. 24, at 7 p.m. Here we will explain the logistics of the appointment process, the details of the Dentist Day seminar and provide a brief explanation of our key bills. A second webinar on THURSDAY, FEB. 10 (last week I wrote Feb. 11), will go into greater detail on our key bills, as well as other legislation that has come up as the introduction deadline passes. Each webinar will last no longer than an hour.
Dentist Day is FREE, so please join us and invite your colleagues to sign up here. It’s critical that we have another good showing in front of our legislators. Last year we had a record number of appointments and had an excellent showing for the seminar. This year’s seminar will include remarks by legislators followed by a Q&A with our Dentist Day participants. Again, we will be keeping this morning briefing to 90 minutes to allow for additional time to set appointments with legislators or to go back to your patients if your legislator meetings are on different days.
As Dentist Day approaches, I think it’s important to remind everyone about the real significance of personal relationships. Our elected officials are not experts on everything, and there are no dentists in the Maryland General Assembly. We can only expect them to know so much about our profession, so it is incumbent on us to help them understand what we do, our concerns, our policy issues, and in turn, hear our praise when they help us. If you or someone in your practice knows a member of the General Assembly, will you please let us know? If you don’t know someone, maybe it’s time to get to know your legislator by joining us for Dentist Day.
We are looking forward to seeing you on Monday at 7 p.m.
Stay well.