dentalshare-blog

[dentalshare-blog]

Dental clinic serves SLSD

More than 6,000 students. Nearly 2,000 appointments. Just over 100 clinic days. $540,345 in dental work. Those are the three-year stats for the South Lane Children’s Dental Clinic

 “There is no other school district in the area that hosts a volunteer dental clinic,” program coordinator, Jackie Lester said. That, is part of the problem.

 The South Lane Children’s Dental Clinic will not turn away a child in pain. It’s primary patient group, however, is made up of low-income students who qualify for Oregon Health Plan (OHP) with 90 percent of the students seen at the clinic, already assigned to a provider. Those providers, though, have months-long waiting lists and can often be located in Eugene. According to Lester, that’s a driving force behind many of the appointments at the clinic: driving.

 “There are a few reasons why kids aren’t getting to their providers,” Lester said. “They can’t get there, their parents can’t take off work, their OHP isn’t current, they don’t know who their OHP provider is or there’s at least a four-month wait.”

 South Lane Children’s Dental helps fill in the gaps in treatment. Since it started in 2012, it has served 7,569 children; 6,736 screenings and 833 treatments. Currently, the program is screening all students between 6th and 12th grade which includes applying fluoride and sealants with parental permission. With a shift in priority, the number of students served, may increase.

 According to Lester, the clinic is planning to do more screening work to combat the need to perform more direct dental work. Lester told the South Lane School Board earlier this year that the original goal of the clinic was to treat as many students as possible. However, this year the clinic will shift to screening and applying sealants and fluoride as preventative measures-the hope being that the need for dental procedures will decrease.

 Lester says there’s a strong correlation between age and the number of sealant applications performed. Younger children, who would benefit in high school from having the procedure, receive it in fewer numbers than high schoolers.

 “The permission slip gets lost, it never gets to mom and dad,” Lester said. “Few elementary students get the fluoride or sealant.”

 More children, however, are getting seen by a dentist. Lester attributes part of the clinic’s success to the transportation service that picks children up from school, brings them to the clinic and then returns them to school, eliminating a costly day off work for parents and a trip up Interstate-5 to Eugene. That doesn’t mean, however, that the clinic doesn’t encourage families to use their OHP providers.

 “We do outreach to overcome barriers to getting to the provider,” she said, noting that the staff with do home visits to walk a family through the OHP process.

 Currently, the clinic is funded through a three-year grant from the Oregon Community Foundation. That grant, is in its final year. According to Lester, future funding options are being explored, but the clinic isn’t going anywhere.

 While South Lane Children’s Dental Clinic serves children who are already assigned a provider, it is able to recoup some of the funds.

 “Let’s look at who’s responsible for providing the treatment,” Lester said. “If that’s OHP, what is missing and what can we support to access services that are being paid for.”

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Harvest gives $600,000 to Dental Health Foundation

MARTINSVILLE-The Piedmont Virginia Dental Health Foundation, the driving force behind the Community Dental Clinic, received a three-year grant from The Harvest Foundation in the amount of $603,195 for indigent dental care.

 The Community Dental Clinic served nearly 5,000 individuals in 2016, and since the clinic opened in 2006, there have been more than 41,400 patient visits providing more than $9.3 million in dental services to unemployed and uninsured children and adults in Martinsville-Henry County. Emergency dental visits to SOVAH Health Martinsville, formerly Memorial Hospital of Martinsville and Henry County, have decreased by 31 percent over the past six years, according to information provided by PVDHF.

 “The Community Dental Clinic provides a valuable service to Martinsville-Henry County,” said DeWitt House, senior program officer at The Harvest Foundation. “The clinic is well-organized, efficient, and provides a variety of dental care for the patients served. The staff and volunteers at the clinic do an amazing job and are committed to the continued success of the clinic. We are fortunate to have an organization of this caliber in our community.”

 Dr. Mark Crabtree, president of the PVDHF Board of Directors, said the dental clinic is the only solution available for those in need who cannot afford care in a private free for service dental practice.

  “We are grateful for Harvest’s substantial support of the Community Dental Clinic,” Crabtree said. “They have been a significant part of our efforts from the very beginning, and we owe our success to their generous funding. This significant three-year commitment makes it possible to continue providing dental care to those who have no other place to access quality dental care. This truly improves the health of thousands in our community.”

 The Piedmont Virginia Dental Health Foundation works in partnership with the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry, providing externships to dental students who provide care in the community. The organization also partners with Patrick Henry Community College to develop the community dental health coordinator and dental assistant programs, as well as local dentists who volunteer their time at the clinic. Other partners include the City of Martinsville in addition to The Harvest Foundation.

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You better watch your mouth: Dental care in the Black community

From the time I was a little girl, to just a day or so ago, someone has always told me to watch my mouth. Why? My mouth runs and sometimes it runs unplugged. I’ve been known to flim flam folks with flattery or eviscerate them with evil, sometimes moving from one to the other with just a shrug of my shoulders. But my “mouth-watching” is not the kind of mouth-watching I’m writing about in this column. I’m writing about the healthy mouth-watching that is critical to our health.

 Nearly a hundred folks gathered at the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) headquarters at 633 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C., to hear two dynamic women talk about dental health. Dr. Diane Earle, the managing dental director at Kool Smiles, in Lancaster, Texas, talked about dental health and its importance. Your mouth, she said, is the gateway to your body, so it is important for you to take care of it by getting regular checkups, taking care of your mouth and, especially, ensuring that children have early dental care as soon as they have even a single tooth. She was joined by healthy living expert Debra Peek Haynes, who is passionate about the way we eat and how what we eat can transform our lives.

 These two women held an audience for an hour, focusing on the many ways we can improve our lives so that we can better resist these oppressive political times. There was talk of the ways we can eat better, exercise better, and live better, with both Dr. Earle and Mrs. Haynes presenting as great examples of healthy living. Dr. Earle, for example, said she had never had a cavity in her life. Deb Haynes (whose husband, the Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes, III, has expertly pastored Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas) shared the ways she used healthy eating to turn her health around after a diagnosis of infertility. I was thrilled to bring the women together and to moderate a discussion that had significant meaning for our community.

 NCNW, under the transformative leadership of Attorney Janice Mathis (who led Rainbow PUSH’s Atlanta office until she came to Washington), is the only space owned by Black people on Pennsylvania Avenue. It is close enough to the “People’s House” at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that one might walk there, which perhaps means that it is close to the devil. That proximity offers an opportunity for resistance, and while much of our resistance must be political, some of it hinges on our personal commitment to a physical excellence that prepares us to have resilience for the struggle.

 Even as we met, the devil was busy. The House of Representative passed the new “tax overhaul” package that they say will create jobs, but we know will create wealth for billionaires; to benefit the top one percent, the bottom 80 percent will be hit hard, but Congress doesn’t seem to care. The Senate has a version of the legislation, and the two houses will have to come up with compromise legislation, but both the House and the Senate agree that corporations should pay less tax.

 At NCNW, we talked about Congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) and her Action for Dental Health Act (HR 2422). The bipartisan legislation, co-sponsored with Republican Indiana dentist and Congressman Mike Simpson, would make dental care more accessible, but with issues like these having low priority in this ideologically divided Congress, it is not likely to even make it to the floor for a vote. Instead, the new tax law would weaken, not strengthen, healthcare access.

 Dental care and nutrition issues don’t get as much visibility as Russia, or sexual harassment, or jiving Jeff Sessions. But they are also important issues. So when we “watch our mouth” by watching what we eat and how we manage our dental care, we are strengthening ourselves for the inevitable struggle against the inequality that is part of the status quo.

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Dental clinic now open to uninsured

A local nonprofit is celebrating the opening of an oral healthcare facility for uninsured residents, an operation made possible through generous donations and substantial grants.

 The Caring Community Clinic housed in the Morgan Building at 1 DeWitt St. in Jacksonville is a clinic whose mission is to provide uninsured people needing help with their dental needs. The volunteer staff made their official opening Thursday afternoon with a ceremonial ribbon cutting and check presentation from the North Carolina Dental Society.

 The clinic will be operated by the Onslow Community Outreach. A $25,000 building grant provided by the NCDS will be used to help pay for start-up equipment and supplies.“The clinic started helping patients in September and has been testing treatment protocols and patient flow in the facility,” said Dr. Virginia Wilson, volunteer dental director.

 Wilson said in a press release before the event that clinic staff has had 125 face-to-face encounters with patients. Currently, the clinic is performing procedures such as focused examination in acute pain and some surgical extractions. Wilson said the clinic treats on average about 10 to 12 each day they’re open.“If patients require a filling or other treatment, there are places in New Bern and Pender where they can go for service,” Wilson said.

 Wilson and her husband James, both retired dentists from Jacksonville, had served the dental needs of the community for decades at their Family Dental Care office on Country Club Road. In addition to more than 50 years of combined dental care they bring to the clinic, the Wilsons donated five general delivery systems dentists and hygienists use when treating a patient plus a compressor used to blow air or suction out a patient’s mouth.

 What is the issue? Nearly 45 million Americans don’t have dental insurance, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

What is the impact? The Caring Community Clinic, 1 DeWitt Street in Jacksonville, will be open to providing uninsured residents dental care.

 How to get help: The clinic is staffed with trained volunteers Monday, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.; Wednesday and Thursday hours are 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.

How to help: Cash donations are always welcome but people can drop off anti-bacterial soaps, towels plus snacks and beverages for the volunteer staff.

“Over time, we’re hoping to attract other retired dentists or hygienist to join us here at the clinic,” Wilson said.

 Thursday’s open house provided an opportunity for the local medical community to see improvements made in the facility and to inform social service agencies that the program is up and running and is a resource for their clients.

 Onslow Community Outreach Executive Director Theo McClammy saw a great need for such an office to help people with their dental needs despite being unable to afford the simplest procedure.“We would not be here if it were not for the generosity of the Wilsons and others in the community who donated not only money and equipment but sweat equity to get this operation up and running,” McClammy said.

 In addition to the NCDS grant, the clinic also received an $80,000 grant from the N.C. Office of Rural Heath this summer.

 McClammy said the idea for the clinic was spawned by a conversation he had with representatives from Onslow Memorial Hospital on ways to better provide care to the medically underserved.“We were seeing about 600 annual visits to our Emergency Room by people with some sort of existing mouth problems and true emergencies. We want to do what we can with the medically underserved who have legitimate issues,” Erin Tallman, OMH’s vice president of Patient Advocacy Officer said.

 The clinic is staffed with trained volunteers Monday, 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.; Wednesday and Thursday hours are 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Wilson said if the public would like to assist the clinic that cash donations are always welcome but people can drop off anti-bacterial soaps, towels plus snacks and beverages for the volunteer staff.

 Nearly 45 million Americans don’t have dental insurance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Historically Speaking: Thank New London dentist for collapsible tube of toothpaste

Up until the year 1892, anyone who wished to clean their teeth had one procedure: They would dip their toothbrushes into a porcelain jar of dental cream.

 At least one local dentist, Dr. Washington Wentworth Sheffield, felt strongly that the practice was highly unhygienic. He not only had definite feelings about the practice, but he decided to do something about it if he could.

 Sheffield was born on April 23, 1827 in North Stonington, the third of eight children to the Rev. John Sheffield and Eliza Sheffield. He grew up there and was educated in the town’s schools.

 In 1850, he trained as an apprentice dentist with J. Comstock of New London. Later, he furthered his preparation by working with Dr. Charles Allen and Dr. H.D. Porter in New York City.

 In April 1852, he moved to New London to begin his long and successful practice in dentistry.

 He married Harriet P. Browne of Providence and they had one child, Lucius, who was born in 1854. Lucius one day would provide the motivation that would be a life-changer for his father.

 In the interim, Washington Sheffield was fully aware there existed a strong desire for clean teeth. Doctors and dentists had created cleaning tools and materials including toothpicks, tooth brushes, and powders. Many of those early tools were often sold by doctors and early druggists. A good example of an early product was “Roger’s Tooth Powder,” which was advertised in the Norwich Packet as early as 1800.

 In 1865, Sheffield graduated from the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, the first dental school in the country. And he had already formulated his own tooth powder and mouthwash that he used with his patients.

 His son, Lucius, grew up in New London and attended Norwich Free Academy. He later attended Harvard Medical School, graduating from that institution’s American Academy of Dental Medicine in 1878. He then traveled to Paris to study dentistry and dental surgery.

  While Lucius was away, Sheffield, in New London, had perfected a balm which could be used as a moist tooth cleaner should a proper dispenser ever be available.

 It was in Paris that Lucius was witness to artists preparing their palettes with paint. He suddenly realized the collapsible tubes being utilized in painting could also be used to squeeze a moist tooth cleaning substance onto a toothbrush in a neat and sanitary manner.

 When father and son began the Sheffield Dentifrice Company in 1880, the location of their company was at the corner of State and Green streets in New London. That’s where he improved his own mouthwash and advertised it as “Sheffield’s Elixer Balm” for the gums. Later, he opened a laboratory behind his residence where he produced his dentifrice. His dentifrice is the first toothpaste sold in America in collapsible tubes. The Sheffields’ products sold very well and were popular with the public.

 The Sheffields’ tooth cleaner was first advertised on March 12, 1881 in the New London Telegram. It was called “Sheffield’s Crème Angelique Dentifrice.”

 The Sheffield Dentifrice Company was also popular with other clients wishing to use the tubes for their own products.

 Washington Wentworth Sheffield died on Nov. 4, 1897 at age 70. His son, Lucius, died Sept. 20, 1901 at age 47.

 Historically Speaking, which appears on Mondays, presents short historical stories written by Richard Curland of the Norwich Historical Society in cooperation with society president Bill Champagne.

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Local dentist offering free dental care for vets on Veterans Day

It's the oath retired Chief Warrant Officer Josue Calderon-Melendez took more than 20 years ago.

 "I will defend my flag," said Calderon-Melendez. "I will defend my country for God country and family."

 Calderon-Melendez is fourth generation military man and the patriarch of a family of five, but like many veterans, he can't get dental coverage through the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 "To get a cleaning, even with three insurances, it's an outrageous expense and not everyone qualifies," said Calderon-Melendez.

 The VA telling ABC Action News there are specific eligibility requirements for dental benefits.  Josue, who was wounded overseas, does not qualify.

 He needed thousands of dollars for dental procedures to alleviate pain.  Money he says he just didn't have.  When Dr. Sarah Jockin of Lake Park Dental found that out, she said she had to do something.

 "We noticed that there were a lot of people like him. We wanted to give back a little bit," said Dr. Jockin. "The least we could do is give a day."

 Not only has Dr. Jockin been helping Josue, but now, she is hosting a Free Dentistry Day at her office in Lutz on Saturday, November 11, 2017 in honor of Veteran's Day.

 Registration begins at 7:00 a.m. and veterans are encouraged to come early.

 Josue said it's events like these and people like Dr. Jockin who he can't thank enough.

 "I am forever grateful that she embraced me like a family member,not only in words, but in action," said Calderon-Melendez.

 "Just the gratitude is such a payback," said Dr. Jockin. "It's lovely to see him smile, chew and be healthy!"

 Lake Park Dental is located at 19151 N Dale Mabry Hwy, Lutz.

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America’s Dental Gap Has Left People Relying on Pliers, Chisels, and Whiskey

September went out hot in East Tennessee. Caleb didn’t 
mind; he parked his lawn chair in a shallow pool of shade, clipped a small fan to its arm, lit a cigarette, and settled back to wait. It would be more than 12 hours before the free medical clinic opened its doors. Caleb had read about the clinic online, and that it was best to get there early. Hundreds of people were expected to show up. Caleb had driven up from Georgia to get a cracked tooth pulled. He’s a lean, hard-looking man with a scar running vertically down from his lower lip, the result of a getting bitten by a dog. His teeth are yellowed, many of them dark brown at the gum line. A few years ago, Caleb paid more than $2,000 to have three teeth extracted by a professional, a price that he considered ridiculous. He works odd jobs but wanted me to know that he isn’t poor: He earns enough to own his house and car. “But there’s nothing in the back pocket,” he explained. Since then he’s resorted to pulling teeth on his own, with a pair of hog-ring pliers that he modified for the job. One time he messed up and crushed an aching tooth, leaving a jagged stump embedded in his jaw; he went after that with a chisel and a hammer. He saved a neighbor $300 recently, he claimed, by pulling a tooth for him. “You know what that cost him? Two and a half shots of Wild Turkey 101.” On the ground beside Caleb sat Michael Sumers, a fellow Georgian with a long neck and wide, darting eyes. Sumers, who never saw a dentist as a child, hoped to get his remaining 14 teeth pulled. He’s only 46 years old. His mouth has hurt him almost constantly for the last five years, but he hasn’t been able to afford any help. Sumers lives on his disability check, and after paying $700 a month in rent, he doesn’t have much left. “I can’t eat steak without my teeth breaking,” he admitted.Chicken is what broke one of Jessica Taylor’s teeth. Another two were broken by her ex-husband’s fist, when he hit her in the mouth during a fight. I found Taylor sitting on the ground, her back to a tree, a pizza box beside her. “Now I’m here,” she said, explaining why she’d come to the clinic, “and he’s in hell.” Over on the far side of the lot, a group of women sat around a small barbecue grill, smoking cigarettes and flipping burgers: Beverly, April, Darlene, and Donna, a woman with a thin face and gray hair scraped back into a ponytail. All of them hoped to get their teeth worked on the following morning when the clinic opened. Beverly smiled, showing me how her two front teeth overlapped. Her parents divorced when she was little, Beverly told me, “and forgot which one was supposed to take care of it.” April, her sister, read about the clinic on Facebook and had been the first to pull into the parking lot that morning. At 9 am, when the clinic staff arrived to set up rows of dental chairs, April was there in a pink T-shirt, waiting on the sidewalk. 

 Of the countless ways in which poverty eats 
at the body, one of the most visible, and painful, is in our mouths. Teeth betray age, but also wealth, if they’re pearly and straight, or the emptiness of our pockets, if they’re missing, broken, rotted out. The American health-care system treats routine dental care as a luxury available only to those with the means to pay for it, making it vastly more difficult for millions of Americans to take care of their teeth. And the consequences can be far more profound than just negative effects on one’s appearance. In fact, they can be deadly. Wealthy Americans spend billions of dollars per year, collectively, to improve their smiles. Meanwhile, about a third of all people living in the United States struggle to pay for even basic dental care. The most common chronic illness in school-age children is tooth decay. Nearly a quarter of low-income children have decaying teeth, well above the national average; black and Hispanic children also experience higher rates of untreated decay. Neither Medicaid nor Medicare is required to cover dental procedures for adults, so coverage varies by state, and both the very poor and the elderly are often left to pay out of pocket. (Tennessee provides no dental coverage to anyone over 21.) In those states where Medicaid does cover dental care, benefits are limited. Even middle-class Americans can’t always afford necessary care, as private insurance often will not cover expensive procedures. Dental coverage improved modestly during the Obama administration, through an expansion of Medicaid and the state Children’s Health Insurance Program under the Affordable Care Act, but access remains patchy and wholly inadequate. The situation is made more difficult by the dearth of dentists in low-income communities. Less than half of the country’s dentists will treat Medicaid patients. As one dentist tells journalist Mary Otto in her 2017 book Teeth, while his colleagues “once exclusively focused upon fillings and extractions,” they “are nowadays considered providers of beauty.” Offering cosmetic procedures in wealthy cities and suburbs is far more lucrative than treating people in rural areas and poor neighborhoods—whitening alone is an $11-billion-a-year industry. The result is a geographic imbalance, with dentists clustered around the money. Nearly 55 million people live in areas officially considered to have a shortage of dental-care providers. At the pediatric dental clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, there’s a two-year waiting list for children who need dental surgery that requires anesthesia. All of this explains why Caleb and a few hundred other people slept in a parking lot overnight—in their cars, in tents, or out on the ground—and then gathered in the early-morning dark, waiting for the pop-up clinic to open its doors. Held at a sports arena outside Chattanooga, the clinic is one of dozens operated each year by the nonprofit organization Remote Area Medical. Appalachia is RAM’s home territory, but the group now runs weekend clinics in medically underserved areas across the United States, from California and Texas to Florida and New York, providing basic medical, dental, and vision care—as well as veterinary services, 
occasionally—fully free of charge. Dozens of doctors and dentists from across the country volunteer their services. The group’s founder, Stan Brock, was there to open the doors at 6 am. Brock is a tan, trim man of 81 with a clipped English accent; he is also a former wildlife-television star. (A quick search turns up photos of Brock holding a lion cub, a snake fatter than his arm, and a harpy eagle named Jezebel.)The idea for RAM came about after Brock found himself badly injured in a horseback-riding accident in a part of Guyana that was weeks away—on foot—from the nearest doctor. Initially, his intent was to fly doctors and medical supplies into remote regions of the world’s poorest countries. Brock got his pilot’s license and a small plane, and started flying medical missions into Haiti, Mexico, Guatemala, Venezuela, and Brazil. He founded RAM in 1985; a few years later, the mayor of Sneedville in northern Tennessee read about the group’s work in a newspaper. The local hospital had closed and the only dentist had left town, so the mayor asked Brock for help. Brock put a dental chair in the back of a pickup truck and drove to Sneedville, where more than 50 people lined up to have their teeth worked on. Ninety percent of RAM’s operations are now in the United States. Little else has changed about the nature of Brock’s work in the two and a half decades since the Sneedville clinic, despite swings of the political pendulum and the passage of numerous health-care reform packages. When I asked Brock about common ailments among the thousands of people who attend RAM clinics each year, he said, “I can tell you that without any hesitation—it’s the same everywhere we go. They’re all there to see the dentist. They’re all there to see the eye doctor. They’re not there to see the medical doctor.” The health-care system treats the eyes and teeth as being distinct from the rest of the body—no matter that an infection that starts in the mouth can move quickly into the bloodstream and then throughout the body. Unlike many other acute physical problems, a cracked tooth or the gradual blurring of vision cannot be fixed in an emergency room. Nevertheless, more than 2 million people show up in the nation’s emergency rooms with dental pain each year, though hospitals can usually do little besides prescribe antibiotics and painkillers. 

 By the time the sky lightened, nearly 200 people had been ushered into the arena. Outside, the line still wrapped around the building. A woman at the back clutched a ticket numbered 631. Her teeth had been hurting her for a year and a half, but there was no guarantee she’d be seen. Inside, volunteers checked the patients in at rows of folding tables. Dental patients were sent to wait in the bleachers, which filled up quickly. One by one, the people in the bleachers were summoned to a chair overseen by Dr. Joseph Gambacorta, a dean at the School of Dental Medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Gambacorta peered into their mouths to determine whether they needed fillings, a cleaning, or—as was most often the case—extractions. Thirty-six-year-old Jennifer Beard from Dayton, Tennessee, sat uneasily in the chair, her mouth open. She’d already lost all but eight of her teeth. “What do I need to do? I haven’t been to the dentist in a long time,” she admitted in an apologetic tone. “My mom and dad died, and I lost my job.” It took Gambacorta about 10 seconds to assess the damage: “I hate to tell you this, but you need them all out.” Preventing tooth decay doesn’t necessarily require a lot of money: Toothbrushes and floss don’t cost very much, Gambacorta pointed out. But it does require constant attention, and neglect is serious. One dental student who has volunteered at several RAM clinics told me about a man who arrived with a mouthful of rotting teeth; asked how often he brushed them, he replied, “Well, doc, I don’t.” Diet and habits like smoking also hasten decay. But all these risk factors are amplified by limited access to professional care. When routine care is unaffordable and decay goes untreated, minor problems can become critical. What starts out as a toothache can become an infection in the jawbone, which can then spread to the bloodstream. In one now-famous case initially reported by Mary Otto, a 12-year-old Maryland boy named Deamonte Driver died from an abscessed tooth that would have cost $80 to pull. Driver’s family had lost their Medicaid coverage, and his mother was preoccupied with trying to find a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth. Driver died when the bacteria from his tooth spread to his brain—and after more than $200,000 in surgeries and six weeks in the hospital. “Six, eight, 10, 15, 16, and two,” Gambacorta said briskly to an assistant with a clipboard, naming the teeth that had to be extracted from the head of a fidgety 30-year-old who’d last seen a dentist nearly a decade ago, when he was in Navy boot camp. Gambacorta took a second look. “Are you sure you don’t want the bottom ones out, too?” he asked. “Put 18, 19, 31, and 32 on the list, too.”While some patients’ teeth were so decayed that Gambacorta had no choice but to recommend their removal, he hesitates to turn people into “dental cripples” unnecessarily. “Everyone’s eager to get them all out, but they don’t know what that means for after,” he told me. People assume that having dentures is easier than dealing with their rotted teeth, particularly if they’ve been in pain. But dentures come with their own complications, including the fact that people who use them tend to eat softer, less nutritious foods. On the main floor of the arena, behind a wall of green curtains, stood four parallel rows of dental chairs—50 in all. I found April, still wearing her pink shirt, waiting in chair 22, her gums already numbed. Caleb was in chair 13; he was quiet and nervous, with little of the nonchalance he’d projected the previous afternoon while describing his pliers. Later on, I found him smoking a cigarette in the parking lot, a new gap where his top left tooth had been. “It’s embarrassing,” he said of the gap. Still, he was grateful. He was getting free eyeglasses, too; he hadn’t realized how badly he needed them. Donna grinned at me from chair 25 as a third-year dental student prepared to pull four of her teeth. The first three came out easily, in a matter of minutes. But the fourth was stuck. It took the oral surgeon who was overseeing things a few swings of his right elbow, as if he were flapping a wing, to yank it free. Donna whimpered in pain, but a few minutes later, her mouth stuffed with gauze, she gave me a thumbs-up. The incessant ache she’d lived with for so long had already started to fade. 

 Over the course of two days, more than 
800 people received care from RAM. Sheila Barrow, a pretty woman of 55 with dimples and long blond hair, said it was the fourth RAM clinic she’d attended. This time, she was there to have one tooth filled and another pulled. Barrow has health insurance through Tennessee’s Medicaid program, but no dental or vision coverage. She worked for UPS, but after four knee surgeries, she’s now dependent on disability benefits. “They’ve been a lifesaver,” she said of the free clinics. “I don’t know what I’d do without them.” And yet it was clear that free clinics like RAM’s barely paper over the yawning dental-care gap. On Saturday afternoon, I found Michael Sumers in the parking lot, waiting for a ride home. All of his top teeth were gone. He’d gotten four pulled, not the 14 he was hoping for—there wasn’t enough time. Up in the bleachers, Gambacorta and another volunteer had discussed how to triage patients as it became clear that the need was greater than the number of dentists. Treating everyone in line meant that some people would have to choose between getting a tooth pulled or another one filled. It should be unnecessary to say that a system that requires people to spend the night in a parking lot to see a dentist, or to pull their own teeth with pliers, or that leaves an infected tooth to kill a child, is grotesquely broken. Yet there is no urgency for reform in Washington, particularly with the party in power more inclined toward cutting health benefits. Part of the fault belongs with dentists’ associations, which have fought proposals for a national health-care system as well as smaller-scale reforms, like giving hygienists more autonomy to provide preventive care in public schools. The fault also rests with the policy-makers who have ignored dental care entirely when debating overhauls to the health-insurance system. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Maryland Representative Elijah Cummings have repeatedly introduced legislation to expand dental coverage through Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Department of Veterans Affairs; the latest version, introduced in 2015, never received a committee vote in either chamber. Unless something changes in Washington, Brock predicted, “Remote Area Medical will be holding these events from now until kingdom come—instead of being where we should be, which is the Third World.”

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ND program seals cracks in children's dental care

HORACE, N.D. (Valley News Live) - A program that seals the cracks in children's teeth also closes gaps--in dental care in North Dakota.

Nine-year-old Avery was just a small third grader when she got her big toothache.

"It was when I bit into like chewy and hard things," she said.

Her mom's busy schedule delayed her from getting right to the dentist. But then the dentist came to her, when Maple Family Dental in Horace visited Avery's school.

It's part of the North Dakota Department of Health's Seal! ND program: sending dentists and hygienists to schools with children most in need of dental care.

Tara Bultema, Maple Family Dental’s oral health educator says visiting the schools is just the first step to getting the kids proper care.

"So they'll come in and do preventative services,” she said, “they'll do sealants, cleanings, exams, fluoride, so that they can reach those kids and then hopefully get them connected into what we call a dental home."

The hope is they'll start going for regular checkups at the dentist after that initial cleaning and sealing. Often the children are covered through parents' insurance, but Bultema says sometimes the work is pro bono.

According to the state's 2015 health assessment, 73 percent of third graders, like Avery, have a history of tooth decay. That's 21 percent higher than the national average.

Dr. Jonathan Bultema, who owns Maple Family Dental, says many in the state don’t regularly visit the dentist.

"In North Dakota there are a lot of kids just do not have direct access to a dentist,” he said. “Some of it's just because of the rural geography of North Dakota, that a lot of people live many miles away from their closest dentist."

A 2012 report completed by the Center for Health Workforce Studies shows that 16 counties in North Dakota have no dentist in practice. Eight more counties have just a single dentist.

But thanks to Seal! ND--which just received a $50,000 grant from Delta Dental in Minnesota--kids in need can get more dental attention.

Like Avery:

"Because there was a cavity that got into the root of my tooth so they had to pull that out," she said.

The program also educated her on oral care--so she can now better clean those chewy foods out of her teeth.

[dentalshare-blog]

Dentists targeted by 'no win, no fee' lawyers as practitioners are twice as likely to be sued than a decade ago

Dentists are twice as likely to be sued than a decade ago as “no win, no fee” lawyers use “aggressive tactics” to target the profession.

The industry is also seeing a stark rise in the number of claims being made in relation to the diagnosis and treatment of periodontal disease, like gum disease or other teeth infection, as these cases tend to lead to substantially higher payouts - particularly in cases dating back decades.

It’s resulted in indemnity costs for dentists skyrocketing by over 400 per cent over the same period, while their earnings in real terms fell by 35 per cent as the cost of regulatory compliance also soared.

The British Dental Association, the trade union organisation for the profession, warned a failure to crackdown on US-style “ambulance chasers” is putting health services under strain.

Mick Armstrong, chairman of the BDA, weighed in on the row by launching a scathing attack on the methods used by lawyers to chase claims.

He said: “Every official report over the decade shows our patients are receiving low risk, high quality care. All that's changed are the hyper aggressive tactics of these ambulance chasers.

“Dentists are already feeling the squeeze on declining pay and skyrocketing expenses. Our patients do not expect to see funds desperately needed for investment lining the pockets of no win no fee lawyers."

The industry has called for more help for dentists CREDIT: MATTHEW FEARN/PA

There are now calls for legal reform to tackle the rising cost of clinical negligence - including a ten year limit on when a claim can be made following an adverse incident, and a fixed recoverable costs scheme for clinical negligence claims up to a value of £250,000 to stop lawyers charging disproportionate legal fees.

It comes as research by Dental Protection, a defence organisation protecting the interests of dental practitioners, found that nine in ten dentists are increasingly fearful of being sued in a survey of 1,500 of its members - with 68 per cent saying it has made them consider their future in the profession.

Raj Rattan, Dental Director at Dental Protection, said: “We know that working in an increasingly litigious environment day in and day out is challenging, and is taking its toll on dentists when they are striving to provide the best possible service and care to their patients.

“We know that a package of legal reforms to help tackle the rising cost of clinical negligence, and the challenging claims environment for dentists, is long overdue. We are calling on the Government to take urgent action.”

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[dentalshare-blog]

The drill on how to save money at the dentist

The sight of sharp dental picks and forceps. The bad memories of bleeding gums. The exquisite agony of a root canal. All of it can cause anxiety among the boldest dental patient.

Another major source of anxiety is the price of those dental visits, from routine cleanings to extensive procedures. More than 40 percent of adultssaid they don’t visit the dentist because of the cost, according to a 2014 study by the American Dental Association (ADA) Health Policy Institute. And 21.9 percent of high-income adults with insurance still cited cost as a reason for missing visits.

At the end of the day, most dentists are in the business of helping people achieve great oral health, and there’s nothing better than finding a dentist you can trust 100%. But it’s still vital to understand why a dentist is taking X-rays, recommending certain procedures or handling billing in certain ways. Equally vital is having confidence that those explanations are in your best interest.

“Most dentists are honest and ethical, but a disturbing minority are willing to jeopardize their own licenses and their patients’ care to pursue insurance money illegally,” says James Quiggle, director of communications for the Washington D.C.-based Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.

Avoid unnecessary procedures and bill padding by recognizing these five lies your dentist might tell you.

1. “We can’t give you an estimate of the cost.”

Any dentist’s office should be able to get you an estimate of the cost, or at least help you get that information from your insurer. 

“Ask your dentist to pre-estimate the costs of treatment before the procedure is done, and compare that to what other dentists show you,” Quiggle says. “You might find a difference in price or how much work needs to be done, if it needs to be done at all.”

Prices vary widely across the nation. The national average cost of a root canal stands at $415-$1,575, according to the ADA. The survey was based on 1,695 respondents.

The ADA further notes that many variables will affect the actual treatment cost ± consider, for instance, the types of materials used or the size of the treatment area. Online cost estimators and calculators, such as Delta Dental’s cost estimator, can give costs for specific cities.

“Patients need to be far more assertive in understanding the procedures and their detailed dental bills. Patients also should know what procedures are needed and which ones aren’t needed,” Quiggle says.

2. “You need multiple tooth extractions or root canals.”

Unless you absolutely abuse and neglect your teeth, multiple major procedures shouldn’t pop out of nowhere at the dentist’s office. While root canals and tooth extractions can sneak up on some patients, most of the time there’s significant pain associated with them beforehand.

No matter what’s being recommended, ask your dentist why you need a procedure, says Dr. Daniel Croley, vice president of network development for Delta Dental, a national dental benefits carrier based in Oak Brook, Ill.

Quiggle adds, “If a dentist recommends elaborate and invasive procedures such as multiple root canals or extractions or multiple cavity fillings, get a second or third opinion.”

A dentist could tack unneeded procedures onto a legitimate one. If you only have a cavity, there’s no need to have a root canal in addition to a filling. There should be proof that a root canal is necessary.

“You may need some cavity drilling, but suddenly the dentist is recommending several tooth extractions or root canals even though your mouth in general feels pretty good and you haven’t found any sign that your mouth is in that sad of shape,” Quiggle says. “That should be a red flag.”

3. “We need to replace all your silver fillings.”

There is a risk of metal poisoning with an amalgam filling, which contains heavy metals that aren’t healthy when exposed. However, that’s the keyword: exposed.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finds that amalgam is a safe filling material. Amalgam fillings are bound, keeping any potentially harmful metals contained. Replacement with a white filling is only needed if the silver one is compromised.

“Replacing amalgams, which if you have metal allergies and things like that, it is definitely warranted,” Croley says. “But it isn’t warranted in every situation if the filling is still in good shape, meaning the margins are still clean.”

The other important factor is the number of fillings being recommended for replacement. If one filling is compromised, that doesn’t inherently mean that your others are, too. They might need to replaced eventually, but they might not present any medical risks for decades. If a dentist recommends that 10 fillings be replaced all at once, think second opinion or visual evidence.

4. “We need to do another X-ray.”

While patients should have a set of X-rays on file, Croley says they’re only necessary every year or two for the average dental patient. They shouldn’t be used to detect diseases without a warning sign.

ADA guidelines state, “Radiographic screening for the purpose of detecting disease before clinical examination should not be performed.”

Patients should be exposed to no more radiation than what’s necessary to adequately diagnose the condition of the mouth, Croley says.

5. “We need to split up your charges to make billing easier.”

Complicated dental procedures often require dental offices to use various individual medical billing codes, which collectively make up that procedure. But you shouldn’t be billed for all the individual codes — only the overall procedure.

“Maybe you should be billed for a full comprehensive procedure, such as a root canal, but the dentist breaks it down into single codes that actually should be bundled into one procedure,” Quiggle says. “All the single codes add up to way more money than just the single procedure would.”

Individual codes for a root canal would include applying anaesthetic, making the incision into the tooth’s crown and filling the root canals, along with the temporary crown, which is applied afterward. Only the root canal, not those other charges, should end up on your bill.

6. “You need a deep cleaning.”

A deep cleaning may sound like marketing mumbo jumbo, but it’s actually a medical procedure that fights specific diseases, including gingivitis. It’s a much more rigorous tooth cleaning that focuses on the space between tooth and gums.

“If you have a disease process started, sometimes you need to go in between the tooth and the gums and clean in between that area and make sure all the bacteria and all the plaque, calculus, or tartar is removed and heal back to normal,” Croley says.

Since most people don’t realize the circumstances in which a deep cleaning is useful, it can easily be upsold as a cosmetic enhancement cleaning, which is inaccurate. A standard prophylaxis, or dental cleaning, should suffice.

“If anyone recommends that you need periodontal cleaning, there should be evidence of that disease process that the dentist should be able to point out to you as the reason for why you need that deep cleaning,” Croley says.

The national average for a cleaning by a periodontist is $90-$175, according to the ADA Health Policy Institute’s 2016 fee survey.

Tips for protecting your finances at the dentist:

·         Use pretax-dollar accounts like an FSA. Flexible spending accounts(FSAs) can be filled with pretax dollars from your paycheck and used for a host of health-related purchases. Since dental work is notoriously expensive, you might want to beef up your FSA if you plan on having major work done. Get an estimate from your dentist so you know how much to budget for the procedure, because FSAs do come with contribution limits and not all contributions rollover each year.

·         Don’t rush into cosmetic procedures. Beautifying operations or applications might be right for you. By that, we mean such things as whitening and dental veneers. But make sure to understand what your insurance benefits covers, and what it doesn’t.

·         Chew over your bill. Indeed, you should check your bill every time, just in case a phantom charge appears. They’re rare, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. “People have found that they’ve been billed while on vacation or were out of town, but here was this magical cavity filling while they were in France,” Quiggle says. “How did that happen?”