Description: The Triple Aim is a vision to improve the health of populations, create a better quality of life, and reduce per capita spending for the benefit of communities.(http://www.ihi.org/Topics/TripleAim/Pages/default.aspx) While much public attention on wellness has focused on topics such as obesity and smoking, it would be beneficial if greater emphasis was placed on raising the bar of oral health. The mouth plays an important role in overall health and wellness. Routine oral care helps prevent dental problems and appears to positively affect chronic conditions before they develop into complex, more expensive ones. This purpose of this session is to increase awareness of the importance of oral health, the consequences of poor oral health, and the link with socioeconomic characteristics. This session will explore and highlight studies completed in this space by both researchers and payers. Actuaries interested in learning more about the impact of oral health and overall health, relevant interventions that have been undertaken, areas for potential financial savings, and issues relating to public policy applicable to oral health would benefit from attending this session.

Description: CMS provides a significant, and growing amount of information that can be leveraged by actuaries. Between the public use and research files CMS makes publicly available large amounts of information that can be assimilated to begin to understand the who, what, when, where, and how of Medicare. This session will focus on the depth and breadth of data available, summarize any restrictions on the use of the data, and identify areas where access to the new data can provide more meaningful insights than CMS's historical data sets.