Alcona Health Center

Oscoda, Michigan

“There is a huge access to dental care issue in this area that we are addressing with help from the dental students from the University of Michigan,” says Lea Krause, dental operations director of the Alcona Health Center.

The number of patients treated there has increased significantly in recent years.

Fourth year dental student Spencer Allen records information about his work on a patient in the patient’s file.

In 2004, the Center’s two staff dentists treated nearly 1,200 patients.

However, since two U–M dental students began assisting the two staff dentists, the number of patients treated more than doubled to 2,450 in 2007.

“We have no restrictions on who we accept for treatment,” Krause says. “And with dentists retiring and fewer accepting Medicaid patients, those are probably the biggest reasons for the increase.” Another reason is the resumption of adult Medicaid coverage in October 2005 after it ceased two years earlier.

Most of the Center’s patients are from Alcona, Alpena, Iosco, and Montmorency counties. But with fewer dentists accepting Medicaid, patients travel from Arenac, Oscoda, Ogemaw, and Presque Isle counties for care.

“In many cases,” Krause says, “it’s not uncommon for some of our patients to travel two hours to receive dental care at this facility, the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base.”

Treating More Patients

Dr. Fadi Mehri, clinical dental director, is assisted by Dr. Dahlia Hadad, who was in the U–M General Practice Residency program from 2005 to 2006.

Fourth–year dental student Greg Allen, one of two dental students working at the clinic in mid September, talked about some of the differences between Oscoda and Ann Arbor.

“In Ann Arbor, we might take two or three hours to treat a patient. But here, we treat more patients, sometimes up to eight a day, so we learn to be more efficient and quicker on our feet.”

The other fourth–year dental student, Spencer Allen, not related to Greg, said he enjoyed getting involved in basic pediatric dentistry. “At the dental school, we had one pediatric rotation during my third year. But here, I saw and treated kids almost on a daily basis.”

Helping the staff dentists to manage an increasing work load is an on–going transition from paper to electronic record keeping.

“It’s faster and more efficient because we don’t have to search paper records for information about each patient or try to decipher a person’s handwriting,” Mehri says.

An intraoral camera also helps staff dentists and patients.

“Many times we tell a patient about their condition and what they must do to improve their oral health,” he says. “But we can use images from the camera to actually show them the problem, and that makes it easier for us to help them.”