Development and implementation of a dental office assessment program.

This paper summarizes steps taken by a large U.S. commercial dental plan to meet measurement challenges through development of a program designed to assess and improve the practices of dentists enrolled in a large preferred provider network. Data collected by trained evaluators who assessed 1,428 dental offices using a structured office assessment instrument were subjected to psychometric analysis by UCLA researchers. Results suggested that the optimal structure for an office assessment instrument consisted of 71 items organized into 10 scales (clusters of measures) reflecting key aspects of dental practice.