#dentalstuff

As the picture shows, I have begun to analyze the Massachusetts Dental Society database to obtain statistics regarding the population of members that accept the MassHealth insurance program.  This is not the format which I plan to use for my infographic, however the executive director of MDS asked that I provide him with a spreadsheet that stratifies district and specialty for all MDS members and non members.  He will be handing out this spreadsheet in his meetings with employees, as well as preliminary meetings with state legislators. 

Unfortunately, this spreadsheet took me significantly longer than I expected it would, as the database that I am analyzing is highly unorganized.  A large number of members did not have their correct licenses inputted, and there is no unique identification number to sort them by.  I also needed to remove all of the retired dentists, as they are still in the MDS database when they do not actually represent the population of practicing dentists.  Furthermore, there were a large number of duplicate and misspelled entries that I needed to fix.  In a small sample size this is easy, but is very difficult when a database has upwards of 4,000 members. This spreadsheet alone took me upwards of five hours to create, when it would have taken me one to two if I did not need to cleanse the database before creating it. I am working on another spreadsheet that calculates statistics relative to license issue date and gender.  The executive director does not want a handout of these, but would like them included in the final product of the infographic.  Once again, this will involve cleansing a large and highly unorganized portion of the database.

In regards to the spreadsheet, each column is one of the 14 districts that Massachusetts is separated into.  I highlighted alternating columns in blue to give it more contrast and make it more accessible for the part of my audience that has some form of visual impairment.  For each district, I have then stratified the members by their specialty of dental work.  The percentage shown in each specialty is the percentage of MDS members of that specialty and located that district that are currently accepting MassHealth insurance.  The numbers below the percentages are the numbers that accept MassHealth and the numbers that don’t.  After discussing with the director of dental practice, we felt that it was misleading to not show the numbers themselves in the spreadsheet breakdown because some of the percentages are misleading when the sample sizes are excessively small. However, the director of dental practice would not like me to go into this great of depth when I create the infographic itself.

When I now go ahead and create my infographic, I plan to use a graphic design program. At the request of the director of dental practice, I am going to the infographic to highlight the portions of the MDS member population to show that MDS members are accepting MassHealth as favorably as possible.  The purpose of this infographic is to help show the state legislature that a law allowing dental hygienists to perform dental work is unnecessary. I plan to use a font type that is aesthetically pleasing, but powerful.  I also plan to use images that help accomplish this goal.