May 2011 Newsletter

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-4/06/2011-

Attendance: Ashmen, Bernstein, Brunsden, Desai, Goldstein, Kaga, Kahn, Krantz, Mir Madjlessi, Modi, Prabhu, Savage, Schambra, Silverstein, Villa, Vitale, Weiner and Marlene Glickman
Acceptance of Minutes-vote unanimous
President's Report-Maya Prabhu
A marketing sub-committee was formed after discussions from last month's meeting. We will also be forming a sub-committee to discuss MCDS's upcoming centennial celebration.
Treasurer's Report-David Stein
See the full report on page 3.
Educational Coordinator-Alyssa Bernstein
Dr. Terry Tanaka's course was on Friday April 8th and was a huge success with great turnout. A survey was given to the attendees to fill out and the details will be presented in a future newsletter.
STAFF NIGHT REPORT
Staff night will be on Tuesday, May 17th at The pines Manor. Over 100 people have already registered so far for the event.
NJDA Trustee's Report-Mark Vitale
See full report on page 5 under NJDA Noteworthy News
NJDPAC Report-Mark Vitale
With elections around the corner NJDA is hoping to collect additional 50,000 dollars from the members in the form of contributions towards NJDPAC.
NJDA Council Reports:
Annual Session-Nainesh Desai
The last Council on Annual Session meeting was on March 23rd, 2011. The Garden State Dental Conference and Expo 2011 will be a weekend event at The Ocean Place Resort in Long Branch, NJ, on June 24-25, 2011. It's a weekend event at one of the most popular locations on Jersey shore. Registrations have been open since last 3 weeks. Dr. Carl Misch is our featured speaker. A full day of Savvy staff series has been planned for your staff members for Friday June 24th. Rooms are getting booked at the Ocean Place fairly quickly. Friday night room reservations are already sold out. Ocean Place is offering nearby convenient locations for stay for that night. Please mark your calendars and join us to honor and support Dr. Richard Kahn, our longtime member and the President of NJDA, at the all new Garden State Dental Conference and Expo. Bring your family and staff for a true Jersey Beach weekend this summer.
Governmental and Public Affairs-Mitch Weiner
State Board: The Governor has still not filled several State Board vacancies that are being maintained by existing members who have stayed on in their positions past their terms. Candidates are being vetted and announcements should be made in the coming months. The NJDA (via COPGA) has played a significant role in making nominee suggestions to the Governor's office of members in good standing who we feel would serve the State Board with distinction. General Supervision Legislation: The draft amendments to the initial legislation have been agreed upon by all interested parties. Sponsors have been found to move the legislation and we are hoping to get it on the fast track in the coming months. Loan Forgiveness Employment: As the law stands now, a dentist cannot receive loan forgiveness credit for delivering care in a 'clinic' located in an underserved area if that place of employment has a sliding fee schedule. We are proposing legislation that will change this law to exempt this so that Medicaid clinics/offices can also qualify. This will help young dentists find more sites that qualify for loan forgiveness to work in and additionally help with access to care for the underserved.
Peer Review-Sandy Goldstein
There were no new cases assigned or mediated last month
Committee Reports:
Mentor-Amit Vora/Nima MirMadjlessi
Our next bi-annual OSHA program that satisfies the OSHA standard on Occupational Exposure to Blood Borne Pathogens, which is required annually for dentists and staff, will be given on June 2, 2011 at St. Peter's Medical Center, New Brunswick.
Two CEU credits are awarded to the Dentists & staff members attending these 2-hour seminars. These seminars are available to our members & staff for $25/pp as a member benefit of MCDS.
A very big "Thank You" to Dr. Joe Fertig, Director of Dental Services - St. Peter's Medical Center, for arranging all our room accommodations for the MCDS OSHA-Mentor programs at St. Peter's Medical Center in New Brunswick. Please see the form in this newsletter for additional information and registration for the Mentor/OSHA program.
Continuing Education-Mark Schambra
The advertising for the Dr. Rule course is being finalized.
Dental Hygiene Study Club-Alyssa Bernstein
The Central New Jersey Dental Hygiene [CNJDH] Study Club met on Wednesday March 9, 2011 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Rte 27 South, Edison NJ and was sponsored by the Middlesex County Dental Society. The speaker was from Hahn Diagnostics. Two CEU credits were awarded to the 25 hygienists that attended this meeting. The next CNJDH meeting will be on Wednesday May 4, 2011 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Edison. The lecture will be presented by Dr. Tom Viola on Pharmacology. Two CEU credits will be awarded for this seminar. This CNJDH study club is available to our hygienists as a Dentist-member benefit of MCDS. Please contact Marlene Glickman, our Executive Secretary for MCDS, at 732-238-1255 for additional information and registration in advance for the program.
Old Business
Drs. Prabhu, Rosen, Silverstein and Vitale met to discuss our marketing efforts for our full day CE courses, Mentor courses, and Staff Night. Target groups, methods of advertising, and a timeline for advertising were proposed and approved. Drs. Rosen, Silverstein and Vitale will also be re-vamping our web site this summer.
Dr. Mitch Weiner is working on a submission for Golden Apple award presented by ADA to a local dental society for outstanding work for the dental community.
New Business
A centennial celebration is being planned for next year to honor 100th anniversary of Middlesex County Dental Society. Details will follow soon.
A permanent Marketing Committee was formed, with Dr. Prabhu elected as Chairperson.
Good & Welfare
Drs. Nancy Villa and Cavan Brunsden were blessed with a second grandchild, a baby-boy named Jack Cavan Gaeta. Congratulations to the couple on the new arrival. On a different note, Dr. Carl Langbert, a past president had an episode of dementia and has been at RWJ for a month. Our thoughts and prayers are for his speedy recovery.
Respectfully Submitted,
Nainesh Desai, Secretary

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Provide MCDS with your email address!

As those of you who have registered your email addresses with us know, the Board is becoming more pro-active in notifying you with timely unformation, such as upcoming early registration deadlines, reminders about the change in date for the April General Meeting, course reminders, etc.
By having your email address, we can get such vital and timely information to you.
Register by going to our web site (www.MCDSofNJ.org), then the member page, then "Of Current Interest." It's the third link down. The username is mcds, and the password is mcds1912.

Updates from NJDA

Staples is now the NJDA endorsed vendor for office supplies. All NJDA members who link their Staples accounts to the NJDA master, will receive further discounts on all orders of $100 or more.

Christa Vodola, of Staples, will be contacting your office soon to speak to the person responsible for ordering your office supplies.  IF YOU ARE RETIRED OR NO LONGER PRACTICING, SHE WILL NOT CALL YOU. She we be asking a few questions to help put together a core list of products that dentists use the most that will discounted at a better rate than the Staples Advantage pricing.
 
Please take the time to speak with her.  Your cooperation will allow us to offer our members significant savings on office supplies and drive non-dues revenues for the Association.
 
Please mark your calendars for the third annual NJDA Business Partners Wine & Cheese Reception, on Wednesday, April 27th, immediately following the Board of Trustees meeting, here at the Association. The office will be filled with endorsed vendors, conference sponsors, Partners Program companies and advertisers in the Journal. It is an excellent opportunity to build relationships with the people who most support your profession. These companies are eager to be more involved at the component level and meeting them face-to-face can help facilitate this process.

NJDA Noteworthy News

NJDA received a letter from a NJ Dental School faculty member requesting $5,000 in support of the UMDNJ externship for rising senior undergraduate students in conjunction with the Indian Health Service during the August academic school break. We have supported this cause for a number of years, however, last year the Board chose to support the students with a check for $2,500 towards this worthwhile effort. After some discussion, the Board felt it appropriate to again give $2,500. for this externship.
Mr. Eric Elmore announced that the 2011 Partners roster is set. The 2011 Gold Partners are: Colgate, Delta, and Schein; Silver is HealthCard; Bronze is Kuwata; Pearl is TDIC, Mid-Atlantic and Prudential Long-Term Care. We lost Benco and Group Financial. NJDA added an Endorsed Program Marketing Initiative which will package ideas together to maximize the company's exposure to our members with little to no capital outlay. On February 23rd, the NJDA Endorsed Program Review Committee reviewed three new potential partners: Prudential Long-Term Care Insurance, Staples and High Tech Innovations. These programs received unanimous approval by the committee.
On February 11th, the NJ Devils hosted Safe Kids NJ/NJDA Mouth Guard Night. Henry Schein supplied mouth guards to every child aged 14 and under. Clips of an interview with hockey legend Ken Daneyko were shown during the game on a big screen on the importance of wearing a mouth guard in contact sports. We were also approached by the Junior League of Mercer County to arrange a dental education program for low-income children and their parents under the League care. We will provide a dentist or two and provide each child with a toothbrush and toothpaste. We will work with the Henry J. Austin FQHC to provide free screening for all the children that attend our education program. NJDA was also approached by the Sussex County School Nurses Association to take part in a health education fair in Vernon on April 4th from 7-8:30 pm. It is specifically for parents of 5th and 6th graders. All oral health instruction and education will be presented to the parents.
The newly formed pre-dental society of the College of NJ in Ewing has requested help and guidance in formulating meeting agendas, securing guest speakers and building relationships with NJ Dental School and to take part in volunteer based NJDA sponsored programming. It was suggested that we help arrange for the pre-dental society in Ewing to sit in at Rutgers pre-dental meetings. It was also suggested that we convey to students when interviewing prospective dental schools to ask the question, how many hours of chair time do they get. A mentor/shadowing program similar to the program between MCDS and Rutgers was suggested.
NJDA will be sponsoring a CE Central section to the NJDA website where NJDA, components and specialty groups will be able to advertise their CE along with a link for registration. This will be password protected and monitored by Mr. Elmore.
It was reported that Give Kids A Smiles saw many milestones, however we did see 700 fewer children than previous years. This was mostly due to UMDNJ not using the upstairs clinic in the school, reducing the number of children to 300 vs. 1000. Also many district school policies did not allow nurses to disseminate our information and the number of contracted mobile units being utilized at the schools also cut into our numbers.
The NJDA Golf Outing is still scheduled for August 15th, however, it will be held at the Deal Country Club rather than Shackamaxon Country Club.
The NJ Oral Health Coalition hosted its fourth Oral Health Summit on January 19, 2011. Panelists and attendees were able to interact and explore solutions to NJ access issues. Five CE credits were offered for all dental attendees. The overall feeling was that NJ lacks important data that would normally be gathered by an office of oral health, which NJ does not have.
The Board gave Mr. Elmore approval to try something similar to the ADA Product Showcase which is enormously profitable for companies and very beneficial for members. He will do blast emails only for endorsed programs, possibly two a year. The emails would be reviewed by Art Meisel and Tricia DeCotiis and sent from NJDA so that no one else has access to member emails. He feels that this would be of financial benefit to NJDA as well as satisfy our growing young membership.
To date we have 4,052 members paid. We are 50 members behind this time last year. Our retention rate in 2010 stayed the same, but we had fewer applicants.
The 2011 Garden State Dental Conference and Expo planning continues. The Ocean Place hotel is selling well. 320 room nights have already sold. You do have to pre-purchase tickets for breakfast and lunch as there is only one restaurant. There is a special event for children on Saturday, June 25th, while you attend the President's Dinner. At that Saturday night event jackets are required but no tuxedo. A brief awards presentation will take place followed by a night of dancing at the nightclub and a dessert reception.
Ms. Mary Moskal reported that, aside from the usual dental benefits and peer review issues, she attended a research study group conducted by Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy funded by the New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance. The purpose was to incorporate views of various stakeholder groups into the design of New Jersey's Health Insurance Exchange as part of the federal health insurance reform law. Under the law, each state has the option of implementing a state-based exchange, or utilizing a national exchange, by 2014. Legislation has already been proposed in New Jersey to create its own exchange, patterned after the federal model, which does not allow for stand-alone dental plans to be a "certified plan" available on the exchange. NJDA expressed its view that since a "certified" plan must include some as yet undefined pediatric dental benefits, health plans would either have to re-tool to accept dental claims or subcontract that portion of the plan, adding to administrative costs. A question was also posed as to whether certified plans should be required to include all of the currently mandated benefits under state law; and the consensus was that they should. One of the current state mandates is that health plans must cover general anesthesia and hospital costs of children under 5, or disabled of any age, if required for dental treatment.
Ms. Moskal also attended, along with Jim Schulz and Art Meisel, a meeting with Department of Insurance staff and its Deputy Attorney General, on the topic of dental plans dictating fees for non-covered services. NJDA's position is that the Department does not have authority under the Selective Contracting regulations to allow plans to set conditions for services if there is no coverage. The Department may decide to get involved in NJDA's current litigation.
NJDA has just filed suit against Horizon Medical for withholding monies based on incorrect payments to non-participating oral surgeons. We have several instances of Horizon deducting from unrelated patient's payments, monies that were previously paid on behalf of another insured. This issue was brought to the Department a few years ago, but no action was ever taken.
Effective March 25, 2011, Medicare and Medicaid with be implementing new application and credentialing procedures, which are intended to curb fraud and abuse and is mandated by the Health Care Reform Law.
Regarding the Denmat issue and veneers, the NJDA once again appealed to the Division of Taxation to force Denmat to stop imposing the state sales tax on veneers – Denmat initially refused to stop stating NJ told them they must charge. The Deputy Director of the Division called Denmat and told them to stop charging the tax immediately. Members are entitled to refunds from the state, with supporting documentation, going back 4 years.
There was a symposium at Princeton University regarding the new National Healthcare Reform Law and how it relates to NJ children. During that forum State Senator Joe Vitale, Vice Chair of the Senate Health Committee, stated he felt strongly that doctors should treat Medicaid patients and others regardless of the patient's ability to pay.More to follow regarding this issue; another reason to support your NJDPAC
It was reported that the Access to Care Task Force is reviewing the role of the RDA Expanded Dental Assistant Model. They are in the process of reviewing other State models and polling specialty groups as to what they would like to see done. The Task Force is screening school programs and will work with a group of schools.
The first sight for the Adopt-A-School campaign in Mercer is Hamilton.
They will review the Loan Forgiveness Program to extend beyond just FQHC's.
The Task Force is looking at what EFDAs are allowed to do in other States. On reviewing the expanded functions for dental assistants, they are seeking any proposal or suggestions from the NJDA Board members. The North Hudson Community is actively looking for a community dental health coordinator and considering taking the Temple University model and putting it in the Bergen Community College.

The low down on NJDPAC
An Editorial by Bob Silverstein

After about 12 years of being a co-editor and now editor of this newsletter, this is my first editorial. I just heard Jim Schulz, our NJDA Director of Governmental Affairs, give another talk at a CE course that I was attending about how he is fighting for us in Trenton. While talking to him after the meeting, I heard again that only 25% of NJDA members contribute to NJDPAC (PAC from here on), and more often than not, after he gives a talk, a total of ZERO of us join PAC. You've seen appeals to join PAC countless times in all forms of media — our newsletter, from NJDA, reports before meetings, etc., and still we have this abysmal participation rate.
Here's what I know based on my involvement in our society over the years (Editor, Secretary through President): NJ Legislators introduce some really bone headed legislation. Sometimes it's a personal vendetta, like this latest issue with trying to set what our cancellation/broken appointment fees can be. Sometimes, it's based on ignorance, like thinking that dental insurance has the same structure as medical insurance. It seems like at every Board meeting we are hearing about yet another bill that got introduced that is outlandish. We all at the Board meeting just look at each other in disbelief or laugh and shake our heads, but something has to be done about each of these ridiculous things. There are thousands of pieces of legislation introduced each year, and NJDA is currently tracking more than 130 of them that directly affect dentistry. How do you think that most of this garbage gets voted down? Legislators are not magically imbued with a deep understanding of how their decisions are going to affect the practice of dentistry when they are sworn into office. It's our PAC committee members, and more specifically Jim Schulz fighting for us and educating them.
So what does "fighting for us" mean? It means Jim, who 1) has friendly relationships with many of the legislators, and 2) understands our issues because we tell him what they are and he listens to us, gets to present our case to them. Why does he get to present our case to them? MONEY. The money that our PAC contributions make to them gets us face time with them. You can dislike this system as much as you want, but that is the reality of it. Like it or not, our contributions are the ONLY reason we get heard. If we don't get heard, guess whose side of the story they are basing their decisions on? Everyone besides us who has their agenda to push and could care less about how their wake affects us. Legislators will hear their side of the story and not ours, and make their decisions based on that.
Knowing this, why wouldn't every NJDA member be lining up to contribute? Maybe everyone just needs some more information.
PAC does not support a party. If you don't like a particular party or legislator, it's not really relevant. The PAC committee supports legislators equally (everyone gets the same dollar amount) and irregardless of their political party. The criteria that the committee uses to determine which people to support is based solely on our history of face time with them, and their history of supporting dentistry more than the majority of the time. No-one is going to agree with us 100% of the time, just as we are not going to agree with them 100% of the time. It is just not realistic. Our PAC contributions to them allows us to say to them, "We want to give you our input on this issue," and they will at least listen to our side of the story.
Your NJDA dues have absolutely nothing to do with PAC. The leadership in your profession certainly appreciates the fact that you are a member and that you pay dues to be a part of organized dentistry. However, dues money cannot be used for any type of political action purposes. PAC needs to raise funds on its own to give us a voice with our state legislators.
The $150 minimum yearly contribution is a huge bargain compared to what could happen if some of this legislation got passed. The 3% Gross Receipt tax alone could have meant $15,000 or more. And then there's the 1099 legislation, the NJ Cosmetic tax, etc. In times of fiscal crisis, guess who they turn to to help make up the shortfalls? The groups who they think have the deepest pockets; in other words, us. It's $150 vs. $15,000. Your bargain contribution of $150 helps us get a chance to tell our side of the story.
Legislation affects dentists irregardless if you are a business owner or not. If you are an associate, you are still bound by and affected by whatever laws are passed that relate to dentistry. Recently, there is talk of legislation that will mandate that dentists treat any patient regardless of their ability to pay. As devastating as you know this would be for a dental practice, think about what this would mean for you if you are paid on collections. As ridiculous as this type of legislation sounds, we need access to the people who think this is a good idea to educate them about how this would impact dentistry. Your $150 gives us an opportunity to provide that education.
Here's the most important part: If you think that Jim is doing a great job without your contribution (and I think he is), and that because of this you don't need to contribute, you are mistaken. You are mistaken because you are a voter, and legislators know this. Imagine that you are a NJ State Senator. Two organizations want your ear: one where 25% of their members participate, and one where 100% of their members participate. Which one are you going to weight more? The dollars matter, but just as importantly the weight behind the dollars matter. Your contribution towards PAC is not just a monetary one; it's a "stand up and be counted" one. We need numbers of contributors, not just the dollars to be able to contribute. Our collective voice will have a much greater impact with many more of us participating. Jim is doing a great job in spite of our low numbers. Let's give him the ability to do his job even more effectively. Let's give him more weight behind our voice.
I'll leave you with this final thought: If you choose not to participate, the laws are still going to be made, and you are legally compelled to do whatever they vote into law. If dentistry doesn't have a voice with our legislators, we will always lose. If we don't have numbers behind our voice, we're not going to have as much of an impact. Someone is always introducing some legislation that they think will make them look good in the voter's eyes, and without the money, we don't get to educate them or show them the errors in their thinking. Without the numbers behind the money, they won't place as much weight behind what Jim has to say. Like it or not, that's the game.
There is a PAC contribution form in this newsletter. If you have contributed, just so you know, if you fill out the form for an amount greater than $150, check that amount and they will charge you the difference between what you have already contributed and that level. If you haven't joined this year, I am asking you to reconsider. It's your profession, and your contribution helps all of us have a greater say in the issues that affect us.