Goal
CareOregon Dental supplied $197,347 in funding and provided ongoing technical assistance and support to Clackamas Health Center (CHC) throughout the two-year project duration. CHC strives to provide high-quality and comprehensive patient care. CHC has made the integration of primary care, dental and behavioral health a high priority. The goal of this project was to improve patient care for individuals seeking dental services by transitioning their dental clinics into trauma-informed clinics. By implementing a trauma-informed approach universally, CHC hoped to reduce the patient anxiety that is often associated with dental treatment, improve the no-show rates in their dental clinics, and increase rates of completed treatment. Their staff was trained on trauma-informed care and clinic policies will be modified to allow the implementation of trauma-informed practices.
Deliverables:
- Establish a trauma informed dental workgroup
- Implement use of Dental Anxiety Scale
- Analysis of comfort items pilot
- Train staff in trauma-informed care
- Develop and implement an environmental assessment, plan and clinic modifications
- Implement a comfort items pilot
- Design and implement a workflow for Dental to Behavioral Health referral process
- Develop policy and procedure documentation for Trauma-Informed Dental care
- Implement warm handoff strategy
- Develop environmental plan and implement environment modifications for Beavercreek and Sunnyside clinics
- Complete policy and procedure documentation for trauma-informed dental care
- Develop and administer staff questionnaire to measure staff knowledge of TIC
- Implement warm hand off to behavioral health
- Refer patients to behavioral health
- Improve processes allowing for increased number of referrals completed between dental and behavioral Health
