SUBSCRIBE TO OUR BLOGMobile Dental Van To Address The Dental Care Needs Of An Underserved Population
Modern technology is changing the human behavior and modifying our capacity for reaching our full potential as individuals. Each new generation is influenced by expanding technology, which reduces poverty and provides resources to pull the underserved population at par to experience the basic family needs essential for normal life.
Technology can now allow rural patients to see specialists without leaving their communities, permits local providers to take advantage of distant expertise, and improves timeliness of healthcare.
The Stanford’s Teen Health Van strives to provide more than just medical care. The team physicians focus on Teens inner strength to support them with their emotional support. Mobile health clinics represent promising vehicles through which high quality, cost-effective health care can be delivered to patients, especially in underserved populations.
Some of us may remember when a doctor came to your residence avoiding visits to your doctor’s office or to the hospital. Dental hygiene students can handle basic dental screening, oral health education, fluoride treatment and preventive sealants to the teeth for the children in the kindergarten to the 3rd grade. These basic dental tasks can be done by the dental hygienists or dental college students at the schools or at the residence. Qualified nurse provider and dental college students can also provide dental services utilizing mobile dental vans at the schools, aged residence, corporate offices and underserved areas. The challenge is to make the basic dental and medical services available to remote areas, vulnerable populations, low income families, new immigrants, the homeless, persons with mental illness, substance abuse problems, pregnant women and the senior citizens. The other group of people needing primary dental care are:
- Population with lack of transportation facilities
- Population with temporal, geographical and cultural barriers to dental care.
- Population with lack of physical strength
Technology has made possible some optional form of medical assistance such as the Chinese smart phone app “chunyu yisheng” that lets users remotely consult with physicians to diagnose their ailments. Its aim is to resolve minor ailments that often clog up hospital waiting rooms. People get safe, personalized, and professional advice from doctors, but it is not a replacement for hospital.
Telemedicine and mobile health intersect at Miami Children’s Hospital. Twenty million patients in 2015 got healthcare from cyber doctors. Seventy five percent of large companies are expected to offer telemedicine in 2017.
The Chinese app “chunyu yisheng” means “Gift from above-doctor” and Telemedicine are essentially “cyber doctors” providing on-line consultation to patients. In laymen’s terms both “telemedicine” and “chunyu yisheng” are on-line medical shopping carts.
The technological developments will continue to help the global community to deal with dental and medical health care needs of the future. But in the meantime, we need to make the existing tools such as mobile dental vans/trailers more efficient and economical. Dental and medical service recipients reside in the major metropolises, rural areas and underserved regions, globally.
The most efficient mobile dental van should be equipped with one or two dental chairs. All the equipment should be anchored to the van body with the necessary structural reinforcements. All the basic dental equipment such as delivery systems, operating light, intraoral and panoramic x-ray systems, vacuum pump, air compressor, ultrasonic cleaning unit, autoclave, cabinets should be properly anchored to the van body to prevent movement while the van is driven from one location to the next. The hand held intra oral x-ray units are not compatible with the mobile dental van/trailer as they may get damaged during the travel and they can be easily stolen leaving the providers without an x-ray unit.
Ford E450 and Mercedes-Benz sprinter type models body & chassis underframe of vans offer economical methods to manufacture compact mobile dental vans. These model dental vans can be driven by any driver and will not require special driver licenses. The compact size of these vans can be driven on rough roads, rural areas and city centers. Our organization will have the first such Ford E450 mobile dental van with 2 chairs operational for use in Chicago.
By definition UNDERSERVED population is provided with inadequate service. Generally the following populations of patients fall under the category of underserved.
- Patients with medical disabilities.
- Patients residing in geographically isolated or medically underserved areas.
- Patients with limited literacy.
- Patients confined to home or geographical regions.
We find pockets of populations in low income communities, underserved rural and urban areas experience significant inequities in dental/medical status, disease burden and mortality. They also have less access to quality health care, preventive services, health providers and community conditions that promote and protect health.
The Mobile Dental and Medical Vans are ideal to provide health care to this pocket of vulnerable populations overlooked by the society. Contact us for information at 586 917 0245 or email, sales@kbdentalconsulting.com
