Episode 26 - The Drill, APRIL 2026

SUMMARY: Ryan Dunn, CEO of the Virginia Dental Association, reviews updates across the VDA strategic plan. He highlights General Assembly outcomes and legislation effective July 1. He notes ongoing opposition to a proposed $2,000 annual cap on adult Medicaid dental benefits and describes participation in a two-year Dental Access Partnership to increase Medicaid provider participation. Dunn also promotes the VDA PAC, upcoming labor and employment webinar, free affiliate memberships for front-office team members, and the Virginia Dental Showcase Sept. 18–19 at the Omni Homestead with early-bird registration currently underway. 

HOST: Ryan Dunn is the CEO of the Virginia Dental Association. Ryan has played major roles in four national and statewide Associations while also working on Capitol Hill. When he’s not talking all things dental, he’s talking about his family and baseball–and sometimes both at the same time.

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

2026 General Assembly Session Recap

Contribute to the VDA Political Action Committee (PAC)

VDA Affiliate Membership

2026 Virginia Dental Showcase

EPISODE CREDITS:

Producer: Paul Logan

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

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Drill. I'm Ryan Dunn, CEO here at the Virginia Dental Association. And each episode of The Drill, I try to give you a rundown of all the things happening at the VDA as we follow along in our three segments of the Virginia Dental Association's strategic plan. So with that, let's get into it so you know the drill. Our first area of focus in our strategic plan is powerful advocacy, and the VDA has been hard at work on this area of focus. As you know, our General Assembly has wrapped up, and the governor has offered her signature to a number of bills, including the major initiatives that the VDA was putting forward as a part of our legislative agenda and our workforce solutions. The number one thing was we focused on inclusion and expansion of programs inside of the Virginia Community College for hygiene. We are excited to say that that money is still there. However, we do not have a budget yet. So the work continues as we continue to advocate. Our second major initiatives this last session was allowing internationally educated dentists with credentials and experience that meet a certain standard determined by the Board of Dentistry, allowing them to have an expedited path to practice dental hygiene. They must, before that, pass the same clinical and written hygiene boards required of all hygienists. So this is simply an expedited path for licensure. We are excited that this passed and the governor signed it. Our third major initiatives was allowing dental assistants with at least 1,800 hours of clinical experience, which equates to about a year's time on the job to earn an additional credential that would allow them to provide limited preventative services, specifically superchangeable scaling and polishing. There are requirements included in that legislation. They're going to have to have 1,800 hours of clinical experience, finish and complete a didactic course, which uh the Virginia Dental Association is hard at work in developing that curriculum. They will also have to do 20 supervised full mouth supergengival scalings under the purview of a dentist. And under oath, that dentist will also have to swear that the dental assistant has done all of these things and keep some documentation and certification inside of the office. We're also excited to announce that that legislation was also signed and enacted, going into effect July 1 of this year. So stay tuned as we will continue to keep everybody updated on the next steps as we go forward. It does not mean that a dental assistant can go super gingerly scale tomorrow or even by July 2nd. There are safeguards and many other things that they'll have to do to get that experience, which we just went over. But stay tuned as we will have more of that to come so that you know just exactly what is needed. Lots of other things still going on. There's a budget that we still do not have finalized. Part of the budget also included a$2,000 per year cap on adult Medicaid benefit. We have been very active in making sure that everyone knows that we are not in favor of that. We're concerned about the negative impact that this would have on patient care. And in the long term, cost the state more money for untreated instances and things that uh will dictate the care that a patient receives because of this$2,000 cap. So we continue to advocate against it. We have actually brought together a group working with the American Dental Association. It's called the Dental Access Partnership for States. This is a two-year multi-sector collaboration designed to increase dentist provider participation in Medicaid and ultimately improve network adequacy inside of the program. We are already activating that group in advocating against these budget cuts to the adult dental Medicaid program. So we are excited about that and we are looking forward to continuing to lead that effort. This General Assembly was very effective for the Virginia Dental Association. Not only were we successful in our workforce initiatives to help alleviate some of the workforce shortages and problems that we're running into, but it was also effective in making sure that other pieces of legislation did not move forward, including things like a medical malpractice CAP increase that would have tripled the medical malpractice CAP. This is just an example of how important it is to have a professional association like the VDA looking out for uh the profession. But also, you have to have a successful political action committee. And we have had one for a very long time. People don't like that there's money in politics. And um, until it is actually taken out of politics, there's not much option you have but to uh to play inside of how the things operate. And a political action committee is part of it. And while it doesn't influence people, we're not offering millions of dollars. We do have the access to legislators, and part of that is because of the PAC. It allows us to gain that access to physically talk to and to help them understand just how important it is and how important the oral health of Virginians are, or how important overall the role that dentistry plays in the Commonwealth in employment. Just how many people are employed in dental offices all across the Commonwealth shows a different light of how and why we matter. So can't express enough how important uh the Political Action Committee is, and we hope you'll continue to support the activities there. I also encourage you to look out for more to come on updates from the General Assembly as the laws that are being signed go into effect July 1. There are unfortunately a lot to go through, specifically in the labor and employment side of things. And so we are going to be having a labor and employment webinar uh in the near future with some legal advice, um, and we'll run down some of those things that you should be concerned about. So please be on the lookout for that, and we look forward to trying to offer that great value to you. Our second area of focus inside of our strategic plan is practice success. And so, one of the big things we've been talking about, and I know you may have heard me talk about it on this podcast before, is our affiliate membership. Our leadership identified this opportunity as a way for us to bring some real value to your front office and to your team members. And so we have offered a free affiliate membership to your front office team members, whether it's a new regulation impacting dentistry in Virginia or an opportunity to improve office efficiency or new resources to develop your professional skills. This new VDA affiliate program is going to offer those things to you. There is CE opportunities tailored to a front office side of things. There's also available a free consultation with our VDA member Perks and Karen Wood, who heads that up to offer and to take a real evaluation and look at the ROI that you have in your office currently set up with some of the outsourcing and some of the existing relationships that you have. That is completely free. And I can tell you, a lot of practices have been finding opportunities to save money. And the best part about that is if our members use them, the benefits also come back. And there are benefits to the VDA as the association itself. So it's a double win, no, no risk, all reward type of their thing there for a personal consultation to find out if VDA member perks works for you. And then that we also have an opportunity for networking of your peers to find out some best practices and to bounce things off with one another. And of course, we still have our dental insurance grievance tracker, which is an opportunity for a lot of the insurance coordinators or front office team support to be able to let us know when insurance issues pop up and what they are. This way we have a way to track and to know trends. And we've already had some good results where we've been able to bring some things to light directly with the dental insurance companies to say, hey, this isn't right. And then a few of them have actually fixed them. So uh we don't always get what we want there, but uh, we have to know about it in order to either ask for change or to go to the legislature and make change for ourselves. So, with that, we hope that you would take the time to learn more about the VDA affiliate member program for your front office team. It is free for VDA member dentists to sign up someone in their office to receive these benefits, to be a part of it. It is yet another value to your membership. So we hope you will take the time to learn more about that and to sign your person up. Our third area of focus is professional development. And there is no better opportunity to develop professionally than to come on out to the Virginia Dental Showcase, September 18th and 19th at the Omni Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, newly renovated the Omni Homestead. It is America's first resort. And if you haven't been there, uh it is one of the few places in Virginia that I would say is a must-visit and must-stay. And if you have been, I guarantee you you may not recognize it. They have spent quite a bit of money on a renovation, very much investment in the long-term stability and the future of an institution that predates our country. This is your chance, September 18th and 19th. We will be there for the Virginia Dental Showcase. The early bird registration is officially open, so take the time to go ahead now and save a few dollars and get your early bird rate. There's going to be a president's party, which has a groovy theme to it and should be a lot of fun. There's also going to be pickleball and shooting and golf tournament. So please take the time. Bring your family, bring your team a great opportunity to get some CE, but also to experience America's first resort and to also uh have some great networking and peer to peer opportunities. So we hope you'll take the time to join us September 18th and 19th in Hot Springs, Virginia. And with that, that wraps up another episode. I'm Ryan Dunn, making sure that you know the drill.