It has been a productive year for us at Northeast Delta Dental and with the New Year tomorrow, I wanted to reflect on 2015. We have much to be thankful for this year and I am proud that we were able to make some key investments in the future of quality oral health care in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont, while remaining a financially sound organization. This year we also effectively engaged the Affordable Care Act by adding more than 10,000 lives on the public (Healthcare.gov and VermontHealthConnect.com) and Northeast Delta Dental private exchanges (DeltaDentalCoversMe.com). These individuals didn’t have access to dental coverage before.
We invested in improving access to quality oral health care in the communities we serve through supporting the Expanded Function Dental Auxiliary (EFDA) program at NHTI Concord’s Community College, to allow Dental Assistants to expand their skill set through performing certain restorative functions. We are pleased to partner with NHTI, the NH Dental Society, and the NH Dental Society Foundation to make this program a reality.
In Maine, each year, we provide two dentists with a $20,000 loan repayment administered by the Finance Authority of Maine (FAME) as long as the dentists continue to meet program goals. Radip Uprety, DDS, and Nicole Emery, DDS, are currently participating in the Finance Authority of Maine (FAME) Maine Dental Loan Repayment Program.
Northeast Delta Dental also has committed to scholarships in the amount of $2,000 for students in the Expanded Function Dental Assistant Program at the Center for Technology in Essex, Vermont. Additionally, Ronald St. John, DDS, and Cheyanne E. Warren, DDS, were selected and each received $10,000 to reduce their educational debt through the Vermont Educational Loan Repayment Program administered by the University of Vermont Area Health Education Centers Program, which we support.
We were also proud to collaborate with the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine (TUDSM) to establish the Northeast Delta Dental Endowed Scholarship, enabling TUSDM to offer up to five scholarships to students from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont each year.
We are looking forward to 2016 as Northeast Delta Dental will continue to transform the dental benefits/oral health industry with our new evidence-based, Health through Oral Wellness Program®.
Wishing you a happy and healthy New Year!
