246 Hospital-based education and referral program to facilitate inpatient engagement in post-discharge dental care

Abstract

Objectives/Goals: Our pilot study tests the hypothesis that a hospital-based oral health education and referral program will increase patient knowledge of the importance of oral health, engagement with dental health services, and create a reproducible model to improve access and utilization of routine oral health care services and treatments. Methods/Study Population: Participants recruited for this study will include a pool of eligible patients at an urban university affiliated teaching hospital, 18 years or older, who upon initial screening, reported having not seen a dentist within the past 12 months. Enrolled participants also reported having some form of dental insurance coverage. Our project plans to recruit fifty hospitalized patients from ten inpatient units. Once consented and enrolled, participants will receive a brief education on oral health and be assisted in scheduling a dental appointment with one of the providers from our dental referral network. The dental referral network will consist of local dental providers who agree to treat our study participants. Tracking of ongoing participant dental care engagement will be tracked over a six-month period. Results/Anticipated Results: We anticipate no issue recruiting the 50 planned hospitalized patients. One, the eligible hospitalized patient pool is large, two, data from previous study indicates that a large percentage (~57%) of hospitalized patients at our facility are not receiving adequate dental services and supports. We anticipated that the number of participants who attend their post-discharge dental appointments will be less than 70%. This number reflects averaged rate of missed dental appointments among other populations and considers that our population may have more barriers to appointment attendance. Due to the high prevalence of unmet dental needs among our study population, we anticipate that providers will report patients were seen for many standard dental procedures (cleanings, extractions, fillings, etc.) Discussion/Significance of Impact: The results of this study demonstrate the feasibility of 1) developing and maintaining a dental provider network and 2) utilizing hospital-based teams to promote inpatient engaging with regular oral hygiene and dental appointments. These results show how inpatients visits provide a valuable opportunity to engage adults with unmet dental needs.