The University of Iowa Public Policy Center's Patient-Centered Dental Home project is designed to improve the organization and delivery of dental care in a variety of care settings and in an integrated manner with other health care services. 

As part of this project, the University of Iowa Public Policy Center developed an interactive, online PCDH Clearinghouse of approximately 500 oral health quality measures and standards, the latest product of the Patient-Centered Dental Home project. This PCDH Clearinghouse is searchable and organized in alignment with the PCDH framework developed as part of a broader effort to define and measure the concept of a Patient-Centered Dental Home. The PCDH project, including development of the PCDH Clearinghouse, is supported by the CareQuest Institute for Oral Health. 

 The PCDH project has been underway for several years with the goal of defining a patient-centered dental home model of care and quality measurement framework that facilitates dental care quality measurement and improvement across multiple care settings as well as medical-dental integration. The PCDH project has been conducted with active engagement of a broad range of stakeholders. Initial project phases focused on developing the definition and conceptual framework for a patient-centered dental home. In the current phase we are identifying measures and standards that can be used to operationalize the framework at the practice and system levels. Throughout this effort, we have gathered structured feedback from a broad-based, 50+ member National Advisory Committee using an iterative, consensus-based process. Additional feedback has been solicited through public comment.  

 Outcomes from the work thus far have included:

• Developed and published a standardized definition of a Patient-Centered Dental Home 
• Published numerous additional reports documenting the development of a quality measurement framework that aligns with the PCDH definition and contains components and measure concepts rated as important to the PCDH by the National Advisory Committee
• Developed the PCDH Clearinghouse of approximately 500 oral health quality measures and standards

The team is currently focused on moving toward operationalizing the conceptual model. To do so:

• They recently conducted a pilot survey with a subset of quality measure innovators in different types of practice settings to identify their current uses of dental quality measurement and improvement. Results from this survey are now available.  
• They will continue to work with the project National Advisory Committee to complete development of the PCDH framework and to begin the implementation stage by: (1) developing PCDH measure sets that achieve standardization and alignment while allowing for flexibility and adaptability to different use cases and care settings and (2) laying the groundwork for pilot implementation. This critical phase of the project creates the bridge from the conceptual framework development to actual implementation.   

Please reach out to members of the team if you have questions about the PCDH Clearinghouse specifically or this project generally.