For the month of July, we're focusing on the health of those living in Kirksville and the surrounding areas.
Amy Baumgartner: Our program really started with a mobile dental truck, and the thought process is – take the care to where they're at, especially with the dental needs for our children.
Because it's hard for parents, in so many rural areas, to transport them and get them to one of the three locations we have, and then mom or dad's missing work, kiddos being pulled out of school.
And so, we purchased our first mobile dental truck and started taking it out to the schools that we'd already partnered with in a program called prevented Preventative Services Program, which was a program that went to a lot of the schools and offered fluoride treatments throughout the school year.
We really found that after we started with our first few schools, many of the other schools saw that as a great benefit – to keep the children in the schools and not have that disruption of them leaving – and so, we've just added schools every year to that program.
Andy Grimm: We also provide sedated dentistry in the hospital for younger kids, and it can be as young as three years old, but usually – 3, 4, 5, 6 years old, that have such decay in their mouth that they really, it has to be treated before they even get to the point of having adult teeth.
It's pain, it's infection, and a lot of those kids in a chair – it would take 15 visits. There's just a significant amount of work.
So, we have been very fortunate to have, be able to provide a service in the hospital in participation with our pediatrics program and our dental program, where we can get all that work done at one time.
Then we follow up with better oral health habits and more frequent visits to get them engaged there, but by the time we get to a lot of these kids, it seems amazing that in just 4 or 5 years of being, you know, being on the on the ground, they're already at that point of such decay that requires a surgery procedure to get them fixed up.
And it's been, it averages about we take referrals from all over the state. They've seen other dentists, whether it's FQHC dentist – ours or anybody else's, but if the child needs that level of care, they'll refer them to us.
We're averaging – we have for about the last 20 years, pretty close to 20 kids a month, and you would think and hope that we would get to the end of that line at some point, but it just doesn't seem to ever get there.
