NIHB ignores dental clinics
By Rick Garrick
THUNDER BAY –An independent dental hygienist is questioning why services provided by clinics like hers are not eligible for the federal government’s Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program for First Nations.
“We have already been providing dental hygiene care for First Nations people,” says Gail Marion, owner of Dental Hygiene Smiles in Thunder Bay. “We opened our clinics, which we worked so hard to open with the goal to provide increased access to dental hygiene care, and Non-Insured Health Benefits will not allow us to bill NIHB.”
Marion raised the question in an online petition she launched in December 2013 at Change.org, noting dental hygiene fees are lower than dental fees.
“In Alberta, independent dental hygienists are allowed to bill NIHB,” says Marion, who opened her clinic this past August and has worked as a dental hygienist for 33 years.
“I have provided dental hygiene care services for many years to thousands of First Nations people in private practice and through contracts with Health Canada in Muskrat Dam (a remote fly-in First Nation community). I’ve been up there four times providing dental hygiene care treatment.”
Marion says her clinic offers flexible hours and is located in an area that has high dental hygiene care needs.
“McKellar Park School, which is two blocks away, is the most identified school in Thunder Bay for dental needs for the children, and they could walk to my clinic,” Marion says. “We’re in an area where people can walk to us and there is a lot of public transportation.”
Marion even offered free dental hygiene care services to community members on Feb. 8 at her clinic.
“Dental hygiene clinics are more accessible location-wise and in terms of hours of operation,” Marion says in her Change.org petition. “The dental hygienists’ fee guide is less than the dentists’ fee guide which will be a saving for NIHB. First Nations people should be allowed a choice in their dental hygiene care provider to minimize the inequities and disparities that affect those least able to acquire the resources to achieve optimal oral health.”
Marion has received plenty of support for her petition from a wide range of people, including comments on the petition from two First Nations women in Thunder Bay.
“Prevention is the best medicine,” Donna Simon wrote on the comment page of Marion’s petition, and Gloria Hendrick-Laliberte wrote “Equal access to dental hygiene.”
Dawn Marie Gustafson, an independent dental hygiene practitioner from Fort Frances, says on the comment page that her profession is “the perfect health care professional to assist First Nations and Inuit persons to achieve and maintain optimum oral health, as well as overall health.”
Marion says there are about 200 independent dental hygiene clinics across Ontario.
“Dental hygiene care is important to overall health. Everybody should have a choice.”
A spokesperson for Health Canada says NIHB has offered to extend a pilot dental hygienist program that ended in September, 2012 for an additional two-year period to gather additional data, and is collaborating with the Ontario Dental Hygienists Association on a survey of pilot project participants.
“As a result of an NIHB pilot project in Alberta, hygienists are now recognized as providers under the Program in order to address potential service gaps in some communities.”