Great news! Today one of our efforts at United Healthcare Community Plan has been completed for recognizing dental hygienists as providers that can be credentialed and contracted with health plans for reimbursement.
Registered dental hygienists can now use the national CAQH application systems to initiate credentialing and contracting with health plans in the same way as dentist providers.
United Healthcare Community Plan has been advocating and requesting this for approximately 9 months. Accomplishing this for the Affiliated Practice Dental Hygienist in Arizona is great success, but there is more to celebrate. By accomplishing this for Arizona, we also effected a national system and tool for dental hygienists to use in other states too. Having CAQH recognize and list registered dental hygienists as a provider type will be helpful as United Healthcare works to credential and contract dental hygienists in other states too.