Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for providing a forum to discuss possible changes to the current regulations governing the Dental Scholarship and Loan Repayment Programs.

Under the program’s guidelines (that you must be within 5 years of dental school graduation), dentists like me who attended a 6+ year (Dual Degree in which you receive an MD degree) program in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery are automatically excluded from the program, since you cannot practice in a rural area until you finish residency if you are an Oral Surgeon or another dental specialist.  I am sure that when the 5 year guideline was set, it was not meant to exclude dual-degree oral surgeons or specialists that require many years of training to obtain specialty certificates and licenses in Virginia. 

I went immediately into residency from dental school and then out into practice (after 7 years of residency training after dental school) in an underserved area and I am a Medicaid provider.  I accepted the responsibility and challenge to practice in an underserved area for less financial remuneration than many of my colleagues so I could serve the residents of Augusta County and beyond.   

Oral Surgeons, like me, with dental student loans (and with the added burden of medical school loans) should be able to apply to this scholarship/assistance program under an exception to the rule based on our residency timeline (6+ years). 

There are FEW Oral Surgeons willing to accept Medicaid and/or practice in a rural area in our state.  I see patients from all over Virginia because so many dentists are unwilling to treat patients with Medicaid who need care.

Please amend/change the requirement to include dentists who enroll in residencies that may extend for up to 6 or more years.  I finished dental school in 1999 and then finished residency in 2006 but I have only been in practice for 1 1/2 years.

Please modify the regulations to include dentists within 5 years of when he or she started to practice once they obtain dental specialty registration licenses in Virginia (excluding residency training). 

Basically, let's not start the clock on oral surgeons, periodontists, and endodontists, etc., until the dentist has finished specialty training!

Thank you for reading,

M. Todd Brandt, DDS, MD

Tim Kaine doesn't really seem to much care about quality in the  Virginia Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation, and Substance Abuse, so it is not a surprise that people are getting assaulted and even dying in their facilities, or (I understand) on man had parts of his ear bitten off.

After tragic killings of 32 people in Blacksburg Virginia by a mentally ill man, one might think that the state DMHMRSAS Board would examine their own Quality Assurance and Quality Control programs.

But there is no record that Victoria Cochran (Chair State Mental Health Board) or anyone else on that Board discussed issues of quality control in the nearly 8 months since the Virginia Tech killings.

The parents, families, and friends of the slain students/faculty at Tech need to understand that Ms. Cochran and the other members of the state Mental Health board appear to be cosmically indifferent to the deaths at Virginia Tech, and there is no evidence in their meeting minutes to indicate they have undertaken any sort of quality control review of the Mental Health System to assure such a tragedy will not occur again.

Record keeping and Meeting Minutes appear to be really sloppy so it's not clear how many times DMHMRSAS State Board met in 2005 (the year Seung Hui Cho was to have been examined), but it appears they missed something like 1/2 their meetings.

They should send the members of DMHMRSAS State Board for a mental examination for deriliction of duty to their constituents because they seem to have laughed off such an important responsibility; and the deaths in Blacksburg are proof of it.

So far, of course, Tim Kaine is silent on this issue.