Minnesota’s Health Appropriations Bill Signed by Governor, Includes Multiple Oral Health Focused Initiatives

On May 22, Gov. Tim Walz (D) signed Minnesota’s health appropriations bill into law. The bill included initiatives for multiple programs focused on oral health:

• Beginning in 2024 or upon federal approval (whichever is later), Minnesota’s Medicaid program will provide comprehensive dental benefits for adults, rather than a limited set of benefits. The legislation requires the program to cover all “medically necessary” services and removes a provision that limited orthodontic services to children.
• The bill creates a new grant program to improve health professional rural and underserved clinical rotations. The Commissioner of Health is required to award grants under this program to augment existing clinical training programs to add rural and underserved rotations or clinical training experiences, such as credential or certificate rural tracks or other specialized training. Many types of health care professional training programs are eligible for the grants, including dental education programs, dental residency training programs and dental therapy programs. Expanded training for dental programs receiving grants must include rotations in primary care settings, such as community clinics, hospitals, health maintenance organizations or practices in rural communities.
• Another grant program will allow the Commissioner of Health to distribute funds for clinical training in areas of Minnesota that the Commissioner determines as a high need area and a profession shortage area. Entities that meet specified criteria for serving underserved populations and entities that host clinical trainees from health training programs, including dentists and dental therapists, are eligible for funding.
• The Commissioner of Health is required to award grants and forgivable loans to critical access dental providers for eligible dental infrastructure projects. To be eligible for a grant or forgivable loan, a dental infrastructure project must be proposed by a critical access dental provider and must allow the provider to maintain or expand the provider’s capacity to serve Minnesota health care program enrollees.
• Another program requires the Commissioner to award grants to health care entities and human services providers to increase workplace safety in health care settings and human services workplace. Dental clinics are eligible for grants under this program.
• The newly created Clinical Dental Education Innovation Grants requires the Commissioner of Health to award these grants to teaching institutions and clinical training sites for projects that increase dental access to underserved population and promote innovative clinical training.
• Finally, the bill directs the Commissioner of Health to contract for an analysis of the benefits and costs of proposals for a universal health care financing system and other reform models as well as the development of an analytical tool. The analysis is required to include spending on dental care.