Kris Potts's Contact Details

Kris Potts's Company Details

National Network of Healthcare Hygienists

, , • 5 - 9 Employees
Other

Network of Healthcare Hygienists (NNHH) is a 501c (3) group of registered dental hygienists (RDH) that have a desire to see oral health prevention formally integrated into medical systems. As a group, we believe our nation's oral systemic health is suffering due to the current separation of dentistry and medicine. By integrating oral health promotion and prevention programs into healthcare systems, and utilizing RDH's to create and oversee the systems and processes, we hope to be the bridge between the medical and dental divide.We are passionate, intelligent, college educated healthcare providers who know as much about preventing oral disease as dentists do. We are licensed by our state dental boards and required to participate in continuing education just like any healthcare professional. Most of us have a bachelor degree or higher. We enjoy educating our patients, communities, and other medical professionals on the oral systemic link. We've known about it for decades! Our truest desire is to help our patients PREVENT disease through education and empowerment. We educate, coordinate, prevent, and refer. We are the Primary Care Providers of dentistry, and we believe we can help healthcare systems save money and improve outcomes.The purpose of NNHH is not to separate RDHs from dentistry, but to better serve our patients by screening and educating them at their primary care appointments, and referring them for appropriate levels of dental care, either within the healthcare system, or outside of it. Physicians, mid-level providers, and nurses are uncomfortable looking in a patient's mouth for signs of disease. We do it all day long, and we are good at it. We know what to look for, and what to do when we see signs of disease. We are educators, able to explain how periodontal disease and untreated decay is contributing to a patient's other disease states. Emphasis will be on prevention, education, and referrals.We can, and DO save lives!