OPINION: Dental compacts have filled in the gaps in other states

You’ve probably seen the TV ads that show doctors suddenly disappearing in the middle of treatment. They definitely get your attention and there is something about those scenarios we can relate to from our own experiences. 

But one thing about those ads is a little misleading. Physicians and dentists leaving New Mexico is not magic, they are choosing to leave for places where it is better and easier to practice. We are in a competition and we are losing. 

If we are ever going to start winning, we must take steps to make New Mexico more competitive. One step is to join interstate licensure compacts. They are not complicated. Just like your driver’s license is good in other states because of a compact, dental and medical licenses from compact states would allow practitioners to practice in the other states of the compact. All we have to do is say “yes.” 

Each state is required to maintain the same high standard of licensure. New Mexico would continue to make the rules that govern practice. Anyone practicing here would have to follow them and be subject to our discipline if they don’t. 

Just like a driver’s license. Some people want you to be afraid of compacts. They make inaccurate claims about lowered standards and dangerous practitioners doing all manner of evil with no way to stop them. None of that is true. There are literally dozens of other states that have been operating with compacts for years and experiencing none of those problems. 

Compacts have proven to work and work well for the states that participate. So well, in fact, those states continue to join every new compact that comes along. Yet New Mexico continues to fall behind by not participating. 

It’s great that the Legislature passed a bill this session to join the physicians compact, but there are eight more heath care professional compacts, including the one for dentists and dental hygienists, still under consideration. 

Sometimes people make claims about losing “state sovereignty.” They say, “we don’t do it like that in New Mexico.” Perhaps it is time to start doing it a different way. Could it be that doing it the way we’ve been doing it is the reason physicians and dentists and hospitals seem to be disappearing? 

The compacts are not going to solve our problems, but they are one step toward making New Mexico a more attractive place to practice. 

There are out-of-state organizations that have an interest in making the Dentist-Dental Hygienist (DDH) Compact fail. They are not concerned with the problems we have in New Mexico but are concerned with their own power and the potential of losing money when states have alternatives to the testing services they sell. They want people to be afraid of the compact but peddle their own alternative to “muddy the water” even though states are not joining it. 

New Mexicans need to see past this and recognize the many advantages of our joining the DDH Compact. Please call or email your senator. Let them know it is essential that we become more competitive and why we must say “yes” to the DDH Compact and all the other health professional compacts. 

New Mexico is a great place to live, but it will be even greater when we become competitive and start attracting health care professionals who choose us over other states. It’s not magic. It is just doing the wise thing.

Tom Schripsema, DDS, is executive director of the New Mexico Dental Association.