the private dentistry sector vs. the public health care sector, was in both resources and expertise,” he says. “Data collection in medicine received significantly more funding and there were far more Canadian academics studying epidemiology, public health and other fields that overlap with workforce in medicine and nursing than there were academics studying the oral health workforce.” The 2020s CDA conducted surveys to determine whether there were supply issues in the oral healthworkforce. “We’ve beenworking with dental assistants and dental hygienists on this project to collect data related to workforce,” says Papadopoulos. “And in June 2024, we came together in Halifax for a workshop to discuss workforce issues and what we can do about them.” CDA also meets with groups of health care providers including optometrists, dental hygienists, and chiropractors to discuss how we can collaborate on better data collection and workforce planning. Recently, an interim steering committee, supported by CIHI and funded by Health Canada, created a new, independent organization called Health Workforce Canada (HWC). It brings together healthworkforce experts and those in the health care field to learn from each other and strengthen health workforce data and planning. HWCuses data fromCIHI and Statistics Canada to create workforce dashboards and other resources. “Statistics Canada has included oral health in some of its Canadian Community Health Surveys (CCHS), which has provided useful information about the usage of dentistry,” says Papadopoulos. “But not all CCHS cycles include oral health questions so that kind of data is only collected periodically, which means there are times when we only have older numbers to work with.” Statistics Canada has committed to collecting oral health data in future CCHS survey cycles and with the introduction of the new Canadian Oral Health Survey. The Data Desert Why is there a lack of data in oral health, a so-called data desert? And why has it persisted? Papadopoulos was a member of the steering committee for a sector-wide effort in medicine and also consulted on a sector study of nursing and pharmacy. “The differences I saw between the two sectors, by that I mean The provincial and federal governments collected data related to the workforces in both medicine and nursing because they directly funded much of the health care those workforces provided, while oral health care has traditionally been almost entirely privately funded. “Because it was private, the oral health sector wasn’t part of CIHI when it started,” says Papadopoulos. “It just wasn’t part of data collection. There were no systems in place. The only thing we had were the databases that CDA maintained on dentists, which is largely confidential information that we don’t share.” Papadopoulos emphasizes that it is important that oral health always be a “player at the table,” when it comes to workforce data and planning. “We need to be there so we can better inform policy makers of the complexity of our profession’s With the introduction of the Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP), it will be more important than ever to ensure that policy makers and workforce planners understand the unique character of the dental sector and the factors that influence our workforce. Over thepast 10years, thenumberof dental benefit claims transmittedelectronicallyhas grownabout 5%per year.Anonymizeddata fromthese electronic claimsprovides insight into the supplyof dentists and thedemand for their services. 32 | 2024 | Issue 5 Issues and People
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