Dental care in long-term care dependency
– the “Teamwerk” project –


IDZ-Information No. 4/09
Benz, C., Haffner, C.
Dental care in long-term care dependency – the “Teamwerk” project –

Abstract

Enormous demographic changes are in progress in Germany and they are induced by the double effect of an ageing population – on the one hand people grow older and older and on the other hand the portion of senior citizens and very old people in the total population is continously increasing. For this reason problem analyses of the medical care of frail elderly persons come increasingly into the focus of health politics. In 2007 approximately 2,25 million insured people had the status of care dependency in statutory and private health insurances. 82% of these people were older than 65 years.

Thus “long-term care depency” is in contrast to other risks of disease characterized by more complex requirements with respect to medical, caregiving and social benefits. And due to an increasing immobility (“slow-goes” and “no-goes”) combined with increasing care dependency often ambulant medical care is not possible any more. This is also true for preventive, therapeutic or oral rehabilitative dental care. These are great challenges for the system of dental care. They were tackled in detail in the 2009 report of the Advisory Council on the Assessment of Developments in the Health Care System entitled “Generation specific health care in a society living longer”.

The present paper „Dental care in long-term care dependency – the “Teamwerk” project“ describes and analyses a model project for dental care of the elderly living in Munich care institutions which was developed in cooperation between the “Teamwerk-Group”, the local sick fund AOK Bayern, the Social Department of the town of Munich as well as the Dental Chamber of Bavaria (BLZK) and the Regional Dental Authority of Bavaria (KZVB). This model is also referred to in the above mentioned report of the Advisory Council as a very successful example: Meanwhile the results show for the first two years already a better oral health status of the elderly and even cost reductions. The authors of this report – and also the iniators of this project – are Prof. Dr. med. dent. Christoph Benz and Dr. med. dent. Cornelius Haffner/Dental University Clinic of Munich.