“We are going to be able to serve so many more people. We will be better able to fulfill our mission,” said Erin Cooper, clinic office manager.
That number was estimated at around 1,500 more people by Claire Timmer, a Tipp City resident who serves as the clinic executive director.
The clinic, started in 2008, moved in August from its home of nine years on Main Street east of Interstate 75 to a larger facility to the west of the interstate. The building at 70 Troy Town Drive was the former home of longtime area dentist Wayne Fisher, now retired.
The clinic already has more than 10,000 patients from Troy, Piqua, Tipp City, West Milton, Covington, Sidney, Bradford, New Carlisle, Pleasant Hill and Casstown, said Timmer.
Of the patients, 50 percent are uninsured and 50 percent are on state-assisted insurance.
The clinic provides routine and emergency examinations, hygiene, extractions, rotary endodontics, amalgam and composite restorations, dentures, partials and crowns.
The clinic is the only full -service, stand-alone safety net dental clinic in the four-county surrounding area, Timmer said.
It’s best form of advertisement, she said, is word of mouth. “People know you need to go to this place because it’s good work, and it’s affordable,” she said.
The added space allows the clinic to have a room for treating walk-in patients and emergency cases.
In addition to its office services, the clinic has a Traveling Smiles program. The outreach provides preventative and restorative dental care to uninsured, underinsured and low-income children in county schools in the school setting.
It also provides experiences for dental students from the Ohio State University College of Dentistry in the Oral Health Improvement Through Outreach, or O.H.I.O Project, The students are overseen by the clinic’s part-time dentists
Timmer said the expansion to the new office was made possible by foundations and individuals along with Fisher, Dr. Jim Sims and the board of directors of the Miami County Dental Clinic.
Contact this contributing writer at nancykburr@aol.com.
Learn more
Contact: For more information the dental clinic, go online to www.miamicountydental.org; call 937-339-8656; or visit Facebook at Miami County Dental Clinic.
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