Partnership expands rural dental clinics

More residents of two Nebraska towns will have a chance to get into the dental chair with the help of a partnership between the University of Nebraska and two public health agencies.

The NU Medical Center College of Dentistry, Panhandle Community Services in Gering, Neb., and the Good Neighbor Community Health Clinic in Columbus, Neb., are working together to provide staff for a dental clinic in each city. Both clinics offer a sliding fee scale based on income.

Before the partnership, the Columbus clinic couldn't open because it had trouble recruiting a dentist. The Gering clinic had trouble recruiting and keeping a full-time dentist and had to limit services to pediatric patients and emergency services for adults.

"It's out of the big city," said Dr. David Brown, executive associate dean of the UNMC College of Dentistry. "A lot of health professionals don't think of considering public health dentistry as a career."

In addition to recruiting graduate dentists, the partnership offers dental students and dental hygiene students the chance to do rotations at the two clinics.

The partnership offers incentives to those who take jobs in the Gering and Columbus clinics. The UNMC dental college and the Nebraska Health and Human Services System will assist with scholarships and student loan repayments.

Now the clinic in Gering has two permanent dentists on staff. It's open five days a week instead of four, and emergency services hours have increased during the week.

Between the months of June and July, the clinic has seen a 40 percent increase in patients, said Jeff Tracy, director of the Panhandle Community Services Health Center.

"We hope through this partnership that we will be able to sustain at least two full-time dentists at all times, resulting in more patients being seen," he said.

The clinic in Columbus also now has a staff dentist.

Brown said that over the course of the next school year, the college would try to get all of its students out to one of the sites.

"The opportunities for recruitment of dentists have improved," he said.