Episode 9: The Drill - July 2025

In the inaugural episode of The Drill, Ryan Dunn, CEO of the Virginia Dental Association (VDA), provides a concise update on the latest activities and initiatives. The episode covers three key areas from the VDA's strategic plan: powerful advocacy, professional development, and practice success. Dunn discusses the workforce challenges, including a shortage of dental hygienists, and highlights efforts such as the new Richmond hygiene school opening in 2026. Other topics include the introduction of an affiliate membership program for dental office staff and the D.I.G. Tracker for monitoring dental insurance grievances. Listeners are encouraged to stay informed and share the updates with their peers.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Workforce Article: New State Report Finds Significant Dental Hygienist Workforce Shortages Throughout Virginia

D.I.G. Tracker: https://www.vadental.org/dental-insurance-grievance-tracker

VDA Member Perks: https://www.vdamemberperks.com/ 

EPISODE CREDITS

Host: Ryan Dunn

Post-Production/Editor: Shannon Jacobs

Subscribe, share, and send your feedback and topic ideas to thefulcrumpodcast@vadental.org.

The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only, and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional, medical, or legal advice.

Music in this episode from Epidemic Sound

Transcript

[00:00:16] Hello, and welcome to an episode of The Drill. I'm Ryan Dunn, CEO at the Virginia Dental Association, and we bring you this offering called The Drill, A short summary of all the things going on at the Virginia Dental Association over the past few weeks, so that we can keep you informed. The other reason for bringing you this short summary and highlight of the activity of the dental association is so that you can easily share this type of information with your peers and your colleagues. Each month, we will attempt at breaking down some of the bigger items and things being worked on by your team here in Richmond at the Virginia Dental Association.

[00:01:00] I wanted to just quickly try to, uh, explain the platform that we will use and stay inside of this each month. Looking at the strategic plan the Virginia Dental Association has in place, we have three major categories. One is powerful advocacy. The second is professional development, and the third is practice success.

[00:01:23] Those are the three big things that the Virginia Dental Association goes to bat for. So, taking the first item, powerful advocacy, the Virginia Dental Association continues to be the only voice for dentistry in the Virginia General Assembly on a daily basis.

[00:01:41] We work really well with all of our professional specialty associations as well. Um, but at the end of the day, there's really only one group that wakes up every single morning, ensuring that dentistry's voice is heard and that the profession that you love and have invested so dearly in is protected and advanced.

[00:02:00] So, with that, one of our big topics is workforce. Want to talk quickly about what is going on in the workforce space? There has been a lot of movement over the past two years where we have really dived into this. When we first put together the Workforce Council, bringing the Governor's office, community college systems, private college systems together to discuss, uh, what is going on with the allied dental professional workforce and how do we address it, what do we need to do? Long story summarizing two years of work. We all know the, the result here is we don't have enough dental hygienists or dental assistants in our workforce. Currently, on our website, you can check out a new study that was, uh, released at the Board of Dentistry meeting that looks at the workforce in the dental space.

[00:02:57] We are 1000 dental hygienists short. That means there are 1000 more licensed dentists in Virginia than there are licensed dental hygienists. The law allows for a four hygienist to every one dentist ratio. This puts us in quite a quandary. So, we've been working tirelessly on all fronts. One, uh, trying to work with our existing programs in the dental hygiene and dental assisting educational space. Whether that be the private sector, the community college system, or other forms of education. We have, uh, had many a conversation and continue to educate and work hard with the existing programs inside of the community college system. Unfortunately haven't seen a lot of positive movement there and the movement that we are going to see is something that's gonna be much further down the line, as things take longer to materialize. Just enrolling more people will be something that will require an investment in lab space. All of those type of things. So, it is a challenge, and uh, we will continue to work on that. However, we have seen some positives, and the Northern Virginia Community College system has pledged to take in more, um, expanding their hygiene class. But again, unfortunately, it is a few years down the road to bring on a new program. It is quite costly and time-prohibitive. It is something that takes a long time to get CODA approved, and all of the other things that are going on there. So, we continue to go down that road, we continue to advocate. Something we are proud to, to be able to announce that, uh, Fortis, a private education company is going to be opening a hygiene school in Richmond with the first cohort beginning in 2026. They will have every six month enrollment with 15 enrolled in each one of those, meaning should have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 a year eventually graduating. So that first class will start in 2026. Um, so again, it's it also is, is a few years down the road before we'll see, um, some graduates coming from that. But really, very exciting there. And we are working with Fortis hand in hand, and we actually have an advisory committee that is helping them identify candidates, helping with some of the admissions processes, and getting them some of the equipment and things that they may need. It has been great. So, uh, that is again in the Richmond area. We have had some wins in this space, um, but we continue to advocate for smart changes and things that need to happen just to loosen the restrictions, whether it be at the CODA level on the federal side or here in the state level as well. So, I will say keep an ear out. There will be, um, some exciting opportunities coming for that. We're going to need all of our members to be engaged and very much on top of that issue.

[00:06:17] The second item in our strategic plan is professional development. This is offering support and education and network essential opportunities for professional growth. There are some exciting things coming up in 2026's membership. You will see that we will be unveiling what is called an affiliate membership.

[00:06:40] That'll be extended to front office and dental insurance coordinators in your office. Precluding that the dentist is a member of the Dental Association, they will have free access to the D.I.G. Tracker. Which I'll talk about here in just a second. They will also have some educational opportunities to better their professional development. Access to very specific things related to coding and dealing with dental insurance claims, and the like. Peer-to-peer feedback and opportunities to share in that as well. And then they'll also have access to the VDA Member Perks programs, which are our savings and discounts that we've painstakingly curated for our members, uh, to be able to save money and make life easier in their office. So the affiliate membership will include a free consultation with Karen Wood in our office, who can walk through and help, hopefully save, uh, most offices, some money, whether it be on credit card fees or other items. So that is something that's coming up and will very much be a big professional development for your team and your office.

[00:07:57] The third item in our strategic plan, which is practice success. And we know that just having this affiliate membership program should also lead to better things and practice success. But, um, another item in that area is the D.I.G. tracker.

[00:08:14] D.I.G. stands for the Dental Insurance Grievance Tracker. Um, if you have not heard of this or not familiar with it. Please go on the website familiarize yourself with it. This is our attempt at tracking the insurance issues that arise at your office. Uh, we may hear anecdotal evidence of this or that popping up. And a lot of times, we just need to be able to collect it, understand it, be able to show trends, and the like. Uh, we've already had some great success with it and we appreciate all those that are currently using it. You will notice in this Journal an article there about some of the outcomes of which we've shared specifically on, in this instance, with uh, Delta Dental of Virginia. And we have taken some of the grievances that we've, uh, accumulated from across the Commonwealth and said, Hey, look at these things. And gratefully and thankfully, some of those items have been addressed, maybe not perfectly, but certainly have been addressed. It is a great opportunity for us to put specifics behind our concerns. And so this has been met with great fanfare. We are slowly getting more offices to use the tracker, on a daily basis. It takes about four minutes. Should you come up against a claim denial or just some anomaly that you're seeing with an insurance that you're dealing with, whether you are on hold all the time and you get hung up on whatever it may be. We're hearing a lot of different things, but please get your office into the habit of using the D.I.G. tracker. It really empowers us to be able to make a difference when it comes to insurance and the reimbursement process and the EOBs and everything related in there. So, uh, we appreciate those that are already using it, and if you are not using it please take a few moments to to get involved.

[00:10:17] So those are just a few things. Each month, I will take some time to talk about the three big things that are, from our strategic plan at the VDA. Powerful advocacy practice success and the professional development. Those are three of the big topics that we focus on at the VDA every day, and most everything we do can fit under, uh, one of, or sometimes multiple of those topics. And so getting us into a habit of saying, here's our strategic plan, here's how we're delivering on that strategic plan. And oh, by the way, if you hear from uh, your colleagues or peers, um, when they say, you know, the VDA is just not doing anything for me.

[00:11:01] The Drill is something that's very easy for you to be able to share with them to say, look, this is just in one month. Some of the things that are going on at the VDA. And you can also share episodes, specifically if they bring up a topic. We have a lot of episodes now of our podcast at The Fulcrum so we hope that you have, uh, taken a moment to subscribe. We ask that you also go give it five stars and please share it as well. It is very important that we get our word out in this manner. It is much easier than reading an email. So with that, I will conclude the first and initial episode of The Drill. Please continue to, uh, check back as we provide more and more updates.

[00:11:45] Again, I'm Ryan Dunn and I'm grateful and thankful for all of you in your membership, and we look forward to talking with you soon.