Providing license portability for dentists and dental hygienists while still maintaining industry standards is a main goal and benefit of interstate dental compacts.
In February, seven states introduced legislation to join the Instate Dental and Dental Hygiene Licensure Compact created by the American Association of Dental Boards. The compact looks to streamline dental licensing, alleviate workforce shortages and improve access to oral healthcare.
But there isn’t just one interstate dental compact in play. The Dentist and Dental Hygienist Compact from The Council of State Governments was activated in April 2024 and thus far 11 states have enacted legislation.
The two compacts have similarities and differences, but at this point are staying separate.
Kimber Cobb, executive director of the AADB, recently connected with Becker’s to talk about the main differences about the two compacts, and where the one brought to the table by the AADB stands.
Note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length.
Question: What goals does the American Association of Dental Boards have with this dental compact?
KC: Our big goal is to maintain expedited portability and then maintain the standards that have existed in the profession for decades. Our stakeholders got concerned about some of the vaguer language in the alternative compact, and so our goal in putting together this language and introducing legislation is to allow for extra valued portability and licensure in the profession, but yet maintain the standards that protect the public.
Q: How does the language in your compact maintain the standards that dental professionals are not seeing with the other compact?
KC: The most important one Cameron has to do with the clinical licensure exams that dentists and hygienists take. The standard currently is a hand-skills examination. The fact that our compact requires that, it continues to uphold that standards. Dentistry is not nearly as regulated as medicine. Unless they’re an oral surgeon, they don’t have hospital privileges. There’s no peer review process on a case-by-case basis as there is in medicine. So a lot of these dental students graduate and hygiene students and turn around and go to practice once they get a license. So it’s very important that in our language, we uphold that requirement of a hand-skills examination.
Q: What are some of the main differences between the two compacts?
KC: Our language is based on the medical compact that was put together by the Federation of State Medical boards back in 2017 so it’s almost verbatim and a very similar license-based model, expedited licensure, for sure, but state dental boards only have purview of our license. That’s a secondary part of our language that is very important that maintains the State Dental Board Authority and purview over licensees in the state.
The other difference has to do with what we call continued confidence. Overall, continued competency is managed via continuing education requirements from state to state. Right now, each individual state board creates the licensure there and the continued education requirements needed to maintain a license in that state. The concern that arose as we talked to state boards and various stakeholders across the country was that in our model that is maintained that each individual that participates in the compact. Let’s pretend that I was a military wife 25 years ago. I had four different licenses, and so I was required to keep up with the CE requirements in all those different states, and our model upholds that. The vague language in the other it’s pretty apparent that an individual who gets a license, say from a state who only requires eight or 16 hours, and they go to practice in a state that requires 20 or 30 every two years, then that remote practitioner in the high requirement CE state does not have to adhere to those requirements.
Q: Where does the organization stand in terms of legislation and getting the compact enacted?
KC: We spent a couple of years trying to get the leaders from the other impact to sit down and come to the table, and when we finally realized that wasn’t going to be feasible, then we took to writing our own. We have active legislation in eight states currently, with plans to introduce and several more. The legislation so far is going well. It’s an education process, but that’s where things stand and our goal. In our language, we need five states to activate our compact, and our goal for this year is to at minimum get those five states and then we can begin the process of creating a commission and all the things that follow.