Introducing the ADA Dental Experience and Research Exchange

Better data drives better patient outcomes. The ADA Dental Experience and Research Exchange (DERE) is an outcomes assessment, research and reporting program intended to promote excellence in dental care.

DERE can start helping practices make evidence-based clinical decisions to improve patient health outcomes today. Over time, data collected from practices across the country will create the most comprehensive database of clinical data to drive positive population health outcomes.

Currently, the standardized aggregate data available in dentistry is not representative of all patients who receive dental care.

By establishing a national clinical data warehouse for oral health, this program will be the first of its kind to:

• Create a more comprehensive source of data including clinical Information, health history and dental findings.
• Create a data source that is not limited to patients covered by a dental plan (i.e. claims data).
• Allow more real-time aggregation of data across the dental delivery system.
• Develop time-trends on treatment patterns and outcomes.

ADA DERE imports data from participating practices to a cloud-based, protected data warehouse. Once participating practices sign up and connect to DERE, no additional effort is required to import data. Practices can start using their personalized dashboards after they connect to DERE. 

Dentistry’s advancement of quality care starts with your practice. Here’s a quick overview on how the process works:

• Step 1: Once your practice decides to participate and completes Enrollment (see Enrollment Checklist), DERE connects your Practice Management System to ADA’s Clinical Data Warehouse (CDW), a protected, cloud-based repository. Practice and Registered Provider data is collected during this step.
• Step 2: The ADA CDW then accesses, extracts and stores practice, provider and patient data directly from your Practice Management System’s software. Patient data is extracted and stored to the extent of a Limited Data Set (LDS) only. An LDS, as defined in the HIPAA Privacy Rule, is a limited set of patient Protected Health Information that excludes certain identifiers like names and addresses but may include identifiers such as treatment dates and zip code. 
• Step 3: This data is then aggregated and analyzed to create your customized data portal and support a personalized dashboard for your practice.
• Step 4: Data is ready to be accessed through your personalized dashboard. 
• Step 5: Using your personalized dashboard, you can identify opportunities to help improve your patient care and practice.

Practices that use Open Dental Version 19.3 or higher can get started today! Dentists need not be ADA members to participate. There is no fee required for participation.

Don’t use Open Dental Version 19.3 or higher? We invite you to leave your contact information to be notified when additional Practice Management Systems are compatible with DERE.