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Axis Health to take over Durango dental clinic

Health department established services for needy patients
Dentist Kristine Hynes shows an exam room during a tour of Axis Health System’s Oral Health Clinic. Hynes is the dental director of the new clinic, which will open July 18 in the Commons Building at 701 Camino del Rio, Suite 316. Clinic hours will be 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Call (970) 335-2442 for an appointment.

San Juan Basin Health Department’s dental clinic will reopen Monday under the care of its new operator, Axis Health System, after a planned transition two years in the making.

On June 30, the health department officially announced Axis Health, a private, nonprofit organization, would take over the dental clinic at The Commons Building in Durango at 701 Camino del Rio.

The program started as a mobile clinic that operated out of a diesel bus in the mid-2000s, intended to serve Medicaid and uninsured patients in four counties in Southwest Colorado – Archuleta, La Plata, Montezuma and San Juan.

However, in 2008, the dental clinic found a permanent home in The Commons Building, which eventually expanded from a small room with one dental chair to a three-room facility, with funding from the Colorado Rural Health Care Foundation.

Liane Jollon, executive director of the health department, said the service helped fill a gap in health care.

“Our responsibility as a local health public health organization is to assess the needs and fill those gaps,” she said. “And we identified oral health as a need not being met in this community.”

Jollon said that providing oral health care to vulnerable populations is not just a problem in Southwest Colorado, but one that affects the whole state, as well as the entire country.

While a place like Durango may have enough dentists per capita, she said, very few dental offices, historically, accepted Medicaid, which left many underserved populations in a lurch.

However, recent expansions of Medicaid, at the federal and state levels, have allowed more people to be insured and take advantage of the added dental component.

“Now, we have more insured folks who can access a very necessary service,” she said.

And now that dental services can be covered by federal and state programs, Jollon said grants are no longer available for the clinic, which prompted the decision to transfer it to Axis.

About two years ago, when Axis Health opened La Plata Integrated Healthcare as a community health center, federal regulations required it provide oral health care. At that time, Axis and San Juan Basin entered a partnership where the local health agency would operate the dental clinic to meet that requirement with the understanding Axis would take it over this year.

Also last month, Axis Health was listed among 420 health centers throughout 47 states that were awarded $156 million in funding to expand oral health care services and increase the number of patients served. Ten centers are located in Colorado.

“Oral health is an important part of our overall physical health and well-being,” said Sylvia Burwell, secretary for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, the organization that awarded the funding. “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.”

Sarada Leavenworth, director of strategy, development and community for Axis, said the grant not only allows the clinic to offer preventive and emergency care, it can also provide restorative care.

The dental clinic will remain at The Commons Building, now with a full-time dentist and a full-time hygenist, which allows the service to expand its capacity for patients.

“There’s very limited capacity in our community for Medicaid, underinsured and uninsured patients to receive oral health care,” she said. “These are the patients that have almost no other option in the community.”

The dental clinic will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. For questions about dental records, call the San Juan Basin Health Department at 247-5702.

jromeo@durangoherald.com

If You Go

Axis Health System’s Oral Health Clinic, The Commons Building, 701 Camino del Rio, Suite 316, Durango. Clinic hours will be from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, beginning July 18. For an appointment, call (970) 335-2442.



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