The Community Health Center of Franklin County and Baystate Franklin Medical Center plan to use a new federal grant to “drill in” to the problem of limited dental care access and related emergency room visits in the region.
The Community Health Center has been chosen among 420 health centers across the country to receive federal funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to expand their dental services. Executive Director Edward Sayer said the $350,000 grant will be used to renovate an area near Baystate Franklin’s emerggency room to accomodate a small dental office.
Sayer said the idea is to inemergency room to accommodate a small dental office.
Sayer said the idea is to intercept emergency room patients who present with mouth pain or other dental-related complaints — which he said account for about 10 percent of all visits — and divert them to an on-site dental professional who can truly treat the root cause of their problem.
“If they enter the E.R., they’re in for a full visit, but if it’s just the dentist they need first, that’ll be available,” he said.
The logistics of the initiative still need to be worked out, he said, but the plan is to install a dental chair and X-ray equipment and staff the space with a dentist for about 40 hours per week, ideally during the times where dental-related E.R. visits peak.
“It’ll be one additional place in the county where residents can access emergency care on a regular basis,” Sayer said.
For a region still in the grip of a deepening prescription painkiller and heroin abuse epidemic, Sayer said having dental staff on site to perform the necessary procedures could also help reduce the number of opioid prescriptions given out by emergency rooms, which typically prescribe the powerful medications alongside antibiotics to patients with dental problems.
“There aren’t many places in the country where this type of thing is being done,” Sayer said.
According to the Health and Human Services Department, the funding is designed to help enable health centers to expand oral health care services and increase the number of patients they can serve. Nationwide, the department said it expects the grants to increase oral health service capacity by hiring about 1,600 new dentists, dental hygienists, assistants, aides and technicians to treat nearly 785,000 new patients.
“Oral health is an important part of our overall physical health and well-being,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell. “The funding we are awarding will reduce barriers to quality dental care for hundreds of thousands of Americans by bringing new oral health providers to health centers across the country.”
Oral health problems can be a sign of illness elsewhere in the body, the department noted. Lack of access to preventive and routine dental care for underserved populations can result in dental conditions requiring more costly emergency dental treatment.
Last weekend, the United Way of Franklin County’s Women’s Way program held an oral health drive on the Town Common to bring awareness to the lack of access to dental care in the country.