Assessment of private dental practice: implications for dental education

The development and testing methods for assessing the quality of private general dental practice are described. The assessment instrument, evolved through the contributions of a panel of private practitioners, provides for the evaluation of the structure, process, and outcome of practice. General practitioners, trained as evaluators, tested the instrument in 300 urban group, urban nongroup, and rural practices in 14 states. The distribution of assessment scores for the entire project sample is compared with those of the sample dentists who graduated before and after 1974. The implications of the project and its results to dental education are discussed.