DPBRN includes dental practitioners (dentists and hygienists) from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oregon, Washington, and Scandinavia. To become a member, practitioners must first complete a 101-item enrollment questionnaire. This questionnaire, which is located at http://www.DPBRN.org , queries information on practitioner characteristics, practice characteristics, and patient characteristics. Some items on the questionnaire were designed to be similar to the ADA Survey. DPBRN will re-administer the questionnaire periodically to ensure that the information collected is up-to-date. From 2002–2004, practitioners completed the questionnaire as a paper form; since 2005 practitioner-investigators have completed the questionnaire on-line. As of April 2, 2007, 1086 dentists (and 25 hygienists who were excluded from the current analyses) from the five participating regions have completed the questionnaire. The regions consist of: Alabama/Mississippi, Florida/Georgia, HealthPartners/Minnesota, Permanente Dental Associates, and the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden.
For two DPBRN regions, collaborations were established with two organizations, HealthPartners (HP) of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Permanente Dental Associates (PDA) of the greater metropolitan Portland, Oregon area. HP is a prepaid, multi-specialty group that provides comprehensive health care. The HP Dental Group is staffed by 58 dentists at 16 clinic locations that serve about 100,000 enrollees. The HP/Minnesota DPBRN region also has a small but growing number of dentists in private practice in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area. PDA is a multi-specialty dental group that contracts with Kaiser Permanente Northwest (KPNW) to provide dental services for KPNW prepaid comprehensive health plan members. PDA includes 110 dentists in 14 dental clinics that serve about 180,000 members with dental benefits. A DPBRN region in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark also exists, which is administratively based at the University of Copenhagen.
In addition to comparing all dentists enrolled in DPBRN with dentists who completed the ADA survey, a comparison was also made with the DPBRN practitioners who completed the first study. This was done to see if there were any significant differences between the dentists who completed the ADA survey and DPBRN practitioners who are actively participating in the studies, since our data will come from this subset. To have been eligible to participate in the first DPBRN study (DPBRN Study 1: “Assessment of Caries Diagnosis and Caries Treatment” questionnaire) a dentist must have been a general dentist, pediatric dentist, or do at least some restorative dentistry, as well as have completed the enrollment questionnaire. Of the 970 practitioners who were eligible for Study 1, 523 completed the Study 1, including 493 general practitioners.Table 1 provides the distribution, by region, of participants who completed the enrollment questionnaire and general practitioners who completed the enrollment questionnaire and Study 1.
For two DPBRN regions, collaborations were established with two organizations, HealthPartners (HP) of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and Permanente Dental Associates (PDA) of the greater metropolitan Portland, Oregon area. HP is a prepaid, multi-specialty group that provides comprehensive health care. The HP Dental Group is staffed by 58 dentists at 16 clinic locations that serve about 100,000 enrollees. The HP/Minnesota DPBRN region also has a small but growing number of dentists in private practice in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area. PDA is a multi-specialty dental group that contracts with Kaiser Permanente Northwest (KPNW) to provide dental services for KPNW prepaid comprehensive health plan members. PDA includes 110 dentists in 14 dental clinics that serve about 180,000 members with dental benefits. A DPBRN region in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark also exists, which is administratively based at the University of Copenhagen.
In addition to comparing all dentists enrolled in DPBRN with dentists who completed the ADA survey, a comparison was also made with the DPBRN practitioners who completed the first study. This was done to see if there were any significant differences between the dentists who completed the ADA survey and DPBRN practitioners who are actively participating in the studies, since our data will come from this subset. To have been eligible to participate in the first DPBRN study (DPBRN Study 1: “Assessment of Caries Diagnosis and Caries Treatment” questionnaire) a dentist must have been a general dentist, pediatric dentist, or do at least some restorative dentistry, as well as have completed the enrollment questionnaire. Of the 970 practitioners who were eligible for Study 1, 523 completed the Study 1, including 493 general practitioners.
