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A new dental clinic in Belfast aims to address the region’s shortage of dental care, and provide treatment regardless of patients’ ability to pay.
“This is for everybody,” said Lori Dwyer, the president and CEO of Penobscot Community Health Care, Maine’s largest Federally Qualified Health Center, which operates a network of nonprofit clinics serving over 65,000 patients across the state.
Waldo County has just one dentist per nearly 6,000 residents — about half as many as the state average, state statistics show.
“It’s pretty startling how poor oral health care is in the state,” Dwyer said.
The PCHC Seaport Dental Center, located above the organization’s Seaport Community Health Center on the former MBNA campus, is expected to provide more than 7,200 appointments each year. It will provide routine care as well as acute and walk-in care.
The dental center, which held its grand opening on Friday, will accept MaineCare and insurance and also has a sliding fee scale. The expansion of MaineCare to cover dental care means there is a huge population of people with deferred oral healthcare needs, Dwyer said.
The nonprofit operates a large dental practice in Bangor — with 40 chairs, it is the largest east of the Mississippi, the organization says. It also provides dental care in two school-based clinics. Patients come all the way from the Canadian border to the Bangor clinic for care, Dwyer said.
To illustrate the need for dental care in Maine, dentist Philip Higgins, who retired as PCHC’s chief dental officer but still works as a consultant, described several cases he has had at PCHC. These included a woman whose front teeth were knocked out by her abusive partner, a young child who needed heart valve surgery but had to wait until a tooth infection and decay were addressed, and a person awaiting a liver transplant patient whose need for dental care put his transplant surgery at risk.
But, he said, the clinic will also provide thousands of routine procedures to patients “who have been ignored in the present dental system, who have struggled to navigate the dental system.”
Recruiting dentists, hygienists and other dental staff is extremely challenging, Dwyer said, especially finding those who are drawn to public health dentistry.
To help address workforce needs, the organization has an on-the-job training program for dental assistants.