Carlson students create strategy to grow dental access

By Gene Rebeck

Minnesota Carlson students sank their teeth into a key social challenge: expanding pediatric dental care access across the Twin Cities metro.

In September, three Carlson Consulting Enterprise (CCE) students partnered with Ready, Set, Smile, a Minneapolis nonprofit focused on accessible dental care.

“I was ready to take on an important problem in our community using what I had learned,” says Sevda Akbari, an MBA student who worked on the four-month project.

Through partnerships like these, CCE gives students the chance to work on real consulting projects for clients, including companies, nonprofits, foundations and public-sector organizations. Since its founding in 2003, CCE has completed more than 600 consulting projects whose objectives span strategy, operations, financial modeling, organizational effectiveness and public-sector problem-solving.

With Ready, Set, Smile, the students’ work supports a profound mission. “Our goal is to help kids establish a lifetime of sound oral health,” Ready, Set, Smile executive director Tessa Trepp-Wetjen says. The organization’s program now operates in three Twin Cities metro-area public school districts, along with several charter schools and early learning centers.

A gap in care

Dentist Adele Della Torre launched Ready, Set, Smile in 2013 as a dental service and oral health education program for lower-income children at an elementary school. Early on, it became clear to Della Torre that there was a lack of accessible dental providers. Although many of the families Ready, Set, Smile works with have their dental care covered by Medicaid, only 53% of Minnesota dentists accept this form of insurance.

“Ready, Set, Smile’s mission to expand access to pediatric dental care for underserved children aligns strongly with CCE’s history of taking on projects where rigorous analysis can lead directly to meaningful social impact,” CCE Managing Director Siddharth Chandramouli says. “The challenge sits at the intersection of healthcare access, economics and system design. It provides our students with a valuable opportunity to work on an issue that can improve care for children across Minnesota.”

Analyzing the challenges

In addition to Akbari, the CCE team on the Ready, Set, Smile project included another MBA student, Wade Garrison, and Stefan Larsen, a senior in the Undergraduate Program. Ready, Set, Smile provided financial data about billing and connected the CCE students with area dentists — those who take Medicaid and those who don’t — and other sources. This helped give the team insights on “what’s stopping dentists from accepting Medicaid — and what works well for those dentists who do take it,” Trepp-Wetjen says. For example, a common perception among dentists is that accepting Medicaid patients poses a financial risk to their practices, as the dentists frequently cite low reimbursement rates and complex administrative burdens.

As the project’s lead, Akbari began by breaking down the problem and determining the questions she and her colleagues needed to address. “I see myself as an enabler,” she says. She also helped the team develop a clear sense of the audience and the language needed to reach them — to go beyond simply presenting analysis and data.

Akbari’s project colleague Larsen, for instance, focused on the operations side. One of the operational challenges that dentists face with Medicaid patients is the problem of appointment no-shows. Larsen’s research revealed that a chief source of this particular pain point was a lack of transportation. He also discovered that Medicaid patients in Minnesota have access to Non-Emergency Medical Transport (NEMT), a state-subsidized program that helps lower-income patients get to their medical appointments.

“Less than 10% of Medicaid patients use [NEMT],” Larsen notes. “That’s mostly because they’re unaware of it.” One solution he proposed for the no-show problem: having dentists include practical information about NEMT with their appointment reminders.

Delivering insights

At the project’s conclusion, the CCE team produced four “playbooks” that provide different strategies for various practice sizes. The playbooks have been designed to help dentists and practice managers perform financial modeling to identify profitability thresholds, determine sustainable patient mix ratios, research successful participation models, develop practical solutions to reduce administrative burden, and improve patient engagement. In other words, the CCE participants have helped Ready, Set, Smile make the business case for treating Medicaid patients, particularly younger ones.

Looking back on his experience with Ready, Set, Smile, Larsen says, “I enjoyed connecting with the client, building the relationship, and helping them with their mission. It feels really good to do your best work and know what you’re doing is going to help people directly—people who are in need.”

As for Akbari, she plans to focus her career on strategy and execution, particularly “growth and transformational projects,” after she graduates this year. The Ready, Set, Smile project “aligned perfectly with my passion for improving accessibility for underserved communities,” she adds. “It was meaningful work that tackles a real problem and creates tangible impact. I want to continue pursuing this kind of mission-driven work alongside a corporate career after completing my MBA.”

Photo at top courtesy of Ready, Set, Smile