Board staff recommend shifting dental-assisting program approval to accrediting agencies after widespread compliance problems

Board staff reported extensive compliance failures among dental-assisting educational programs and courses and proposed shifting approval and oversight to accrediting bodies that routinely review educational programs.

Tina Valerie, chief of licensure and program compliance, said staff have “found major compliance issues with the majority” of programs after doing standard and complaint-driven reevaluations. Valerie listed problems including programs offering far fewer clinical hours than regulatory minimums (regulation requires 265 clinical hours), incomplete student records, missing or superficial performance evaluations, lack of documented sequencing for infection-control instruction, problems with sterilization and use of extramural clinical sites, and inadequate supervised clinical instruction.

Board staff said they had conducted four RDA program site visits in the past year; the board is responsible for reevaluating RDA programs every seven years and has many other program and course providers under its oversight. Valerie reported that of 21 program reevaluations completed over the past year, 12 had their approval withdrawn, three were granted continued approval, and six reported closure; the four RDA programs reevaluated had all had approval withdrawn.

Because the current $300 course-application fee does not cover staff costs for reviewing new course applications (as discussed later under AB 873), staff proposed moving approval of dental-assisting educational programs and courses to an accrediting body and returning to a working group and stakeholder meetings to explore options. The board’s Dental Assisting Council had discussed the issue the prior day and the full board accepted the item as informational and asked staff to continue stakeholder engagement.

Clarifying details recorded during the presentation included: - Regulation minimum clinical hours for RDA programs: 265 hours; staff found programs requiring as few as 98, 170, 180 and 240 clinical hours. - Site-review workload: 4 RDA site visits conducted in the past year; 92 RDA programs on the seven-year reevaluation cycle; 903 other program/course providers requiring oversight. - Recent reevaluations: 21 reevaluations completed in the past year; 12 approvals withdrawn, 3 continued approval, 6 closures; all 4 RDA re-evaluations led to withdrawn approval.

The board did not take a formal vote to change approval authority at this meeting; instead, members supported returning the issue to a working group and continuing stakeholder discussions. Staff will report back with stakeholder input and proposed next steps.

Speakers quoted are drawn from the meeting transcript and include board staff and members who commented during the agenda item.