Galloway: Better access to dental services is good medicine for Midlands

Instead of sleeping, Sally watched every hour on the clock as she suffered through the unabated throbbing of a toothache. She hadn’t been to the dentist in nearly a decade, and her pain told her she was paying for the neglect. She got dressed and headed to the emergency room.

Sally’s not a real person, but her story is representative of the many poor, uninsured and underinsured who seek dental care in emergency rooms where treatment is most often temporary pain relief. Emergency room visits for dental care are an expensive and ineffective option that contributes to rising health-care costs, at an average cost per visit of $1,000.

The American Dental Association estimates that annually more than 2 million visits to the emergency room are for dental care, and the numbers are growing. Locally, Palmetto Health and Lexington Medical Center each saw at least 2,000 emergency room dental visits in 2012, an increase of 21 percent from past years.

There is heightened awareness of the inextricable connection between dental and overall physical health. The need for free dental services for uninsured and underinsured adults has been identified as a key health gap in our community through two community health needs assessments, in 2009 and 2013.

To help address this problem, the BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation funded a grant for the Midlands Healthcare Collaborative, which aligns the United Way of the Midlands, Palmetto Health System, Lexington Medical Center and Providence Hospitals in providing care to vulnerable populations.

Through this three-year, $608,000 grant, we are underwriting the purchase of equipment for five additional dental suites at the Community Partners of the Midlands, a clinic where volunteer dentists and other dental professionals provide free care to patients whose income falls below 200 percent of poverty or who are uninsured.

Today, due to the limited space, adult dental services at Community Partners are available only 12.5 hours per week in Richland County and 11.5 hours per week in Lexington County; roughly 2,400 adults and children receive care annually in the two counties.

Following recent final approval by Richland County Council, the dental suites will be expanded on the third floor of the county health department in downtown Columbia. Currently, two treatment rooms are used for adults, and an additional five will allow for a full-time dental program designed to handle more patients.

This smart public and private collaboration sets the stage for a better future. By 2017, it is anticipated that the number of adults seeking treatment at Community Partners will swell to 3,768, with an additional 2,313 adults coming in for preventive services. That translates into better oral health care for a vulnerable population, likely improved oral health education, less pain and suffering and fewer avoidable visits to the emergency room, which is not only good medicine, but is good for all of us.

This story was originally published August 3, 2015 at 12:35 AM with the headline "Galloway: Better access to dental services is good medicine for Midlands."