Navy Dental Corps contract or uniform study of factors influencing business case analyses

Abstract

This thesis analyzed costs and benefits between the recruiting of active duty dentists and the proposed alternative of contracting them instead. Despite aggressive efforts to improve Dental Corps recruitment and retention, the annual loss rate has steadily increased. This has forced the Dental Corps into using alternative programs such as the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP) and the Financial Assistance Program (FAP) in addition to the accession programs already being funded. Also, there are various recruiting costs along with the accession bonus that costs the Navy over $90,000 per dentist recruited. The scope of this thesis included, but was not be limited to: (1) a review of the current structure of pay for active duty Endodontists by referencing Additional Special Pay (ASP), Variable Special Pay (VSP), Dental Officer Multiyear Retention Bonus (DOMRB) and the Board Certification Pay (BCP) that dentists receive while serving on active duty (2) and a summary of private sector pay and incentives for dentists in private practice. The thesis also analyzed the differences between the two with a Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) model. The completed research found savings in cost for contracting already licensed and trained Endodontists in place of recruiting a general dentist and training them to become an Endodontist over the 10 year period as composed in the analysis. In addition, a steady-state model verified the CBA and showed savings in cost per year as well. Each model shows significant savings when contracting Endodontists in our shore based MTFs. Furthermore, to mitigate shortages, this research proposes to concentrate resources on military essential competencies and contracting workload for nonmilitary essential functions, such as Endodontists. Note that Endodontists were chosen because they are one of the larger nonessential specialties with billet inventories above the Operational Support Algorithm (OSA).