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National Action Strategy |
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National Action StrategyFor Development of a National Network of University-Based Developmental Medicine and Dentistry Programs
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 | Access to Quality Health Care: UDMDPs provide desperately needed quality medical and dental care to Americans with mental retardation and developmental disability, living in communities, who have significant difficulty obtaining these services. |
| Education
and Training: UDMDPs function as university-based centers of education and
training for medical and dental students, residents, externs and fellows. |
| Research:
UDMDPs serve as academic centers where meaningful patient-centered
research-focused on solving specific medical and dental problems affecting
the patient’s quality of life – can flourish. |
By employing the AADMD’s National Action Strategy, we
realize two distinct advantages:
| UDMDPs
- establish pre-developed fellowship curriculum programs at the University,
while establishing training sites at off-campus medical and dental clinics,
thereby utilizing pre-existing infrastructure, and allowing immediate
implementation without significant new construction costs. |
| UDMDPs
encourage partnerships between communities, universities and ICFs/MR: These
partnerships – focused on patient care, teaching and research–
strengthen our society’s commitment to people with mental retardation, and
make it more difficult for any one of the partners to turn away from their
commitment in years to come. These partnerships have a tendency to
improve the quality of education in the schools by moving experienced
clinicians into academic positions, thereby increasing professional
awareness of issues relevant to the care of the patient with MR/DD.
They improve the quality of care in the community, and the ICF, by bringing
to them the standards of care established in the universities.
Finally, by acting as teaching and research centers, the UDMDPs educate and
train the next generation of physicians and dentists in the care of the
patient with MR/DD. These clinicians can then go out into the
community with the confidence and skills necessary to provide quality care
to these special patients. |
UDMDPs could be established in
relatively short order without establishing new funding streams, without
spending additional resources, and, in all likelihood, without creating new
legislation. The pieces of the puzzle necessary to implement this National
Action Strategy already exist. They simply need to be fitted together
effectively.
Developing quality UDMDPs across
the country will ultimately require a commitment from the Federal Government –
not to spend more money or create new funding systems – but to show leadership
and commitment to this cause.
A critical and necessary step
will be for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, by the simplest and
most direct method available (a Technical Assistance Letter), to advise State
Medicaid Directors that no federal statutory or regulatory language exists that
would prevent them from allowing an applicant ICF/MR facility administrator to
designate 2.5% of their ICF/MR annual budget for the establishment of seed
funding for a University-Based Developmental Medicine and Dentistry Program.
Such a directive should clarify that ICF/MR infrastructure and funding is
available for the development of such programs. States wishing to recoup
(by billing third-party payers) that portion of the ICF/MR budget directed
toward the development of these programs, can develop strategies for doing so
according to the laws / regulations of that state.
It should be emphasized that this initiative would not require that additional money be spent, but that a small portion of current, existing ICF budgets could be directed toward serving this growing community-based population.
American Academy of Developmental
Medicine and Dentistry
National Action Strategy
www.aadmd.org
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