Protecting Your Patients and Your Practice Key to 2025 ISDS Legislative Agenda

Feb 6, 2025

Advocacy work at the state legislature impacts the dental office daily. The Illinois State Dental Society (ISDS) is on the front lines, ensuring lawmakers understand the challenges you and your patients face. While you’re providing care, we are focused on protecting the profession and fighting for policies that support both dentists and patients.

Our 2025 legislative agenda prioritizes the reauthorization of the Dental Practice Act, fighting for dental insurance reform and Medicaid reimbursement.

Dental Practice Act Reauthorization

The Illinois Dental Practice Act expires on December 31, 2025. All professions are reauthorized every ten years. This year, ISDS filed legislation to extend the act for another ten years.

The Dental Practice Act Reauthorization accomplishes four main initiatives:

  • Reauthorizes the Dental Practice Act for another 10 years.
  • Recognizes all 12 American Dental Association (ADA)-approved dental specialties.
  • This bill extends the timeframe for dental hygienists to treat patients in Illinois Department of Corrections facilities under general supervision from 45 to 180 days.
  • Creates a temporary dental hygiene license for 4th-year dental students, enabling them to gain practical experience, earn income and reduce student loan debt while completing their education. This initiative will help alleviate financial burdens from student loan debt during their transition into the workforce.

Fighting for Dental Insurance Reform

The dental insurance system is broken, and dentists and patients feel the impact every day. ISDS is committed to addressing the most urgent issues affecting your practice while also tackling the systemic problems that make real reform difficult. This year, we are prioritizing key changes that would make immediate improvements:

  • Ensuring patients' insurance payments go directly to their dentist when requested through assignment of benefits.
  • Outlining clear exemptions to the new electronic claims submission mandate that takes effect in 2026 and requires insurers to provide accurate patient eligibility information.
  • Clarifying existing law on virtual credit card payments so insurers cannot force dentists to incur extra fees for electronic reimbursements.
  • Continuing to analyze dental loss ratio (DLR) policies and reporting data from other states to further examine and address the systematic problems within dental insurance.

ISDS recognizes the need to address systemic issues in dental insurance that have been created over decades.  Policies, like DLR, expose how insurance companies allocate patient premiums, which highlights structural problems within the system.

ISDS is actively analyzing successful models from other states and identifying innovative solutions to ensure meaningful reforms for Illinois dentists and their patients.  ISDS is evaluating critical issues such as the percentage of premiums allocated to patient care, ensuring compliance and enforcement, and increasing insurer transparency and accountability.

This is just the beginning. By building on our progress, we are committed to delivering real solutions and holding insurance companies accountable.

Fighting for Increase to Medicaid Reimbursement for Children’s Dental Services

Illinois ranks 49th in the country for Medicaid dental reimbursement rates for children’s dental services, which is unacceptable. This year, ISDS is pursuing legislation to increase these reimbursement rates to improve access to care, reduce preventable emergency treatments, and address oral health disparities.

ISDS continually hears from our members about the extremely low rates in the Medicaid program. The State has increasingly tried to become creative with how to fund the State’s Medicaid program. Two years ago, this included an idea to tax all dentists in the State to help fund the Medicaid program.

Members are continually asking ISDS to address the low reimbursement rates in the Medicaid program. While we have made some progress in this area, our work is not done. It is time for the State to increase the dental reimbursement for children’s dental services.

Making Your Voice Heard in Springfield

ISDS has delivered major victories for dentists and patients in recent years, thanks to the power of our collective voice. Because of your engagement, in 2024, we had a monumental year.

We are not done. With your continued support, we will build on these successes, push for stronger policies, and ensure that dentistry and patient care remain a priority in the State of Illinois. Let’s keep the momentum going.