Since your job is dental insurance, what was your most memorable experience in the dental chair?
A: We don’t even want to go there. I have had about eight crowns, orthodontia and a little TMJ (temporomandibular joint) problem.
I’m a dentist’s dream. I grew up in a town where the water wasn’t fluoridated, and my parents didn’t have dental insurance.
I was taught to brush my teeth regularly, but I had a lot of cavities and abscessed teeth. I have a great dentist, but I’d like to see him less.
Q: Is that how you got into the dental-insurance business?
A: No. Actually, when I retired (as Kaiser Permanente Western region president) in 2000, I ran into my friend Mary Hobson, a recruiter at EFL Associates. She said, “Are you bored yet?” and I was.
I didn’t understand anything about dental care when I started. What I came to learn is that nearly 100 percent is preventable. Only half the people who have medical insurance also have dental insurance. And there are significant disease problems for children.
Q: How does Delta Dental help kids with teeth problems?
A: A state estimate is that half of Colorado’s kindergartners have untreated tooth decay. We’re working on Senate Bill 59, which would create a pilot program to screen first-graders and refer them into treatment programs. The state would pay for half of the treatment, and a group like our Smile-a-bration would pay half.
But we need more donors. Last year, Kaiser told us that during the time the Smile-a-bration line was open for appointments on the Internet, it got 88,000 hits. That’s how big the problem is. The tragedy is if we could get to kids early, we could prevent all of this.
Q: What is Smile-a-bration?
A: Shortly after I came to Delta, the senior management team and I talked about how we were up to the 1 millionth enrollee. We asked what we should do to cross over this important line.
We’re in Year 4 of Smile-a- bration, and by the time we’re done (this month), we will have seen more than 10,000 kids and provided $2.25 million in care.
Q: Who encouraged you to get into the public-health field?
A: My master’s degree was in public health. I give credit to my mother, who was a nurse, and Jim Vohs, the former chairman of the Kaiser Foundation health plan.
I was running one of the Kaiser medical centers in California, and (Vohs’) custom was to come visit with people in the facility. That’s where I met him.
A few months later, I got a call from a fellow in human resources who wanted to see if I’d be interested in moving to Colorado. I told him no. He said, “You know, Kate, this is a really significant request (from Vohs).” I came here, and Jim and I worked off and on together until he retired.
Q: You have more than 30 years of experience between the health-insurance and dental-insurance industries. What do you think is the biggest difference between the two?
A: Health insurance is in more of a crisis than dental insurance. The fundamental problem now is the cost of care.
We use more health-care services than any other nation. Health-care economics don’t work like conventional economics, so in health care, the more supply you have, the more utilization you have, and the more cost.
For dental care, we also see increasing costs. There’s a relationship between availability of services and the lack of pricing. (Dentists) don’t advertise it, so consumers never know the price they’re getting.
Q: How do you address high costs for dental care?
A: We try to encourage subscribers to take advantage of as much preventative care as possible. It’s particularly important for children, because if you can prevent a child from getting a cavity, you can save a considerable amount of money over the lifetime of a patient. The cost of a cavity is about $3,200, since there’s later often a crown and a root canal.
Q: I understand that art is a passion of yours. How do you decide what goes into the company art collection?
A: Kaiser has an extensive collection, and now we’ve been building an art collection at Delta Dental. It’s a cool thing, because the employees run it. All I have is the veto power.
I’ve only had to make a veto once, where it was the wrong image, if you know what I mean. Bloody things are not nice on medical walls.
Edited for length and clarity from an interview by staff writer Beth Potter.
