Haines’ SEARHC dental clinic is expanding – and likely moving downtown – to accommodate residents left without a private practice to go to for dental care.
SEARHC public relations specialist Stacy Smith said the clinic is expanding from three to five chairs and will likely be moving into the lower floor of the Soboleff-McRae Veterans Village.
“Basically, what is going on is we are still ironing out some details,” Smith said. “Nothing is set in stone yet as far as location, but we have had site visits by an architect to look and evaluate.”
SEARHC dental unit director Tom Bornstein said the clinic will move within the year. “It looks like we are all hoping this works out and it seems to be,” he said.
The two extra chairs will allow dentists Dr. Alex DeYoung and Dr. Lucia Nascimento to accommodate more people, he said. “A typical program allows for dentists to work more than one chair,” Bornstein said.
The extra chairs will also give the clinic more flexibility. In the past, dentists have had to rearrange their schedules to accommodate visiting specialists like children’s dentists and prosthodontists who use the same facility.
The clinic, which recently hired two permanent dentists after two years of rotating interim dentists, is trying to meet the needs of residents left without a private practice after the death of Main Street dentist Patrick Smalley, said Bornstein.
“We have sort of become the de facto provider of dental service for the entire community, and that kind of created a bit of pressure on our system,” he said. “We never intended to be the sole provider.”
Originally, the dental clinic in Haines only served Native beneficiaries. About 10 years ago, SEARHC signed a contract with the U.S. Health Resource and Service Administration allowing the clinic to start seeing non-Natives on a sliding scale.
“It allowed us to see everybody in the community that wanted to see us but at the same time there was a private practice. The intention was some people would go to the private practice and some people would go to the clinic,” Bornstein said.
After Smalley’s practice closed and SEARHC was struggling to find its own dentists for the clinic, the organization decided it had to step up.
“We tried for quite a while to recruit a dentist for Haines and it was very difficult for us. I think we finally came to terms that it was going to be a very long haul if we didn’t do this. It was unlikely a dentist was magically going to appear to pick up the other half of the population,” Bornstein said.
The new space will be at least one-third bigger than the existing space at the clinic on First Avenue, Bornstein said.
“Once we get the preliminary plans, things can move along fairly quickly because we’re not having to do any demolition of anything. It’s going to require a fair amount of equipment, though, because we are expanding the footprint of our existing clinic,” he said.