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Plans for Hattiesburg Health Center's New
Dental Clinic Began as HRSA Executive Training Project
From right to left: HRSA Administrator Betty Duke, SeMRHI's
Chief Executive Officer Kaye Ray, and HRSA Senior Advisor Steve
Smith in front of the new dental clinic. The old temporary clinic
can be seen at the right back of the photo. |
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Even before Hurricane Katrina devastated Mississippi
Gulf communities in August 2005, dental care for some of the
neediest residents of Hattiesburg, Miss., was limited and
inadequate.
Administrators of Hattiesburg’s Southeast Mississippi
Rural Health Initiative, Inc., (SeMRHI), a HRSA health center
and Ryan White grantee, recognized the need to provide more
dental care and rose to the challenge.
In early 2005, SeMRHI’s Chief Executive Officer Kaye
Ray nominated Chief Financial Officer Hope Braley and Chief
Operating Officer Geroldean Dyse to participate in the 2005
Johnson and Johnson/UCLA Health Care Executive Program. The
2005 class convened on the UCLA campus in July, a month before
Hurricane Katrina hit.
Currently in its sixth year, the J & J Health Care Executive
Program provides management development training for executive
directors and leaders of community-based health care organizations
fully or partially funded by HRSA. The goal is to help participants
increase their organizations’ financial stability, and
improve outreach, access to health care, and community satisfaction.
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Along with 34 executives from health care organizations around
the country, Braley and Dyse stayed in dormitory rooms on the UCLA
campus and worked individually and in groups from 7:30 in the morning
until 10 at night on what Braley called “intense assignments.”
One involved a “Community Health Improvement Plan,”
a team project to tackle obstacles affecting community health care
delivery. Braley and Dyse brain-stormed on their community’s
unmet needs and determined to focus their project on expanding dental
care.
SeMRHI had been providing dental services to the Hattiesburg community
in a temporary facility for more than five years. But the facilities
were cramped, able to house only one dentist, and the wait to see
the dentist was as long as eight weeks. Patient satisfaction surveys,
monitored monthly, indicated that the biggest patient complaint
was the small waiting room. SeMRHI executives knew a larger, permanent
dental center was needed, but funds were limited.
That’s where the project that Braley and Dyse brought back
from UCLA paid off. It saved SeMRHI time and resources in planning,
and the health center executives decided to adopt their project
as the actual plan for the new dental center. In June 2006 —
less than a year after Katrina devastated the nearby coast and added
about 20,000 new residents to Hattiesburg’s pre-storm population
of 100,000 — construction for the new dental clinic began
on property adjacent to SeMRHI’s main Hattiesburg clinic.
And on May 7, 2007, doors opened wide to the brand-new Hattiesburg
Community Dental Center — a 4,200-square-foot, single-level
facility with six examining rooms or operatories; large waiting,
records and triage rooms; and state-of-the-art x-ray equipment.
Planning and construction amounted to a labor of love for Braley,
who’d also helped lay out SeMRHI’s other health center
sites.
“We tried to meet the needs of our patients
and staff. We now have room for two dentists, two hygienists
and a large waiting area,” said Braley. “The clinic
has a very warm atmosphere, too. Each operatory has a window
at the foot of the chair and open entryways. And there’s
wallpaper all the way down the hall to give a three-dimensional
feel. Although our dental center’s in a very poor rural
area, it’s a fun place to visit. On top of that, the
patients love our dentist.”
In 2006, the year after Katrina, SeMRHI recorded 6,685 dental
visits, up from 4,030 in 2005. With the new dental facility,
SeMRHI hopes to provide 8,000 dental visits annually.
HRSA Administrator Betty Duke toured the new dental facility
just before its grand opening during a visit to SeMRHI in
late April. While there, Dr. Duke awarded the organization
three HRSA grants worth $1.8 million to expand operations
and extend its reach into Pearl River County.
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An operatory in the new dental clinic. |
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Printer-friendly July 2007 Inside HRSA (Acrobat/PDF)
