With many employers looking for ways to manage rising health-related costs, disease management and wellness programs are growing in popularity. Disease management programs, while an accepted medical practice, are still relatively new in the dental field. However, given the growing acceptance of the association of oral health to overall health, the importance of dental benefits to employees, and the desire among employers to derive more value from their benefit plans, dental disease management is a reasonable next step.

What exactly constitutes a comprehensive dental disease management program? According to MetLife, to deliver the most value to employers and employees, dental disease management programs should contain these components, working in conjunction: employee engagement, disease risk and severity scoring, targeted relevant education, analysis/reporting, and continuous looping engagement and reporting over time. It also needs to be easy for employers to implement and employees to participate to be effective. MetLife's disease management solution, the MetLife Dental Health Manager^SM, is offered to group customers with 500 or more employees at little or no additional cost¹.

Dr. David Guarrera, DDS, vice president, MetLife Dental Product Management, says, "Effective dental disease management programs have the potential to benefit both employees and employers with healthier outcomes and cost mitigation. A robust education platform combined with the systems and processes needed to measure and monitor the health of employees and their utilization of benefits over time can help influence healthier behavior."