UT’s new dental center to care for more patients

The $96.5 million Center for Oral Health Care & Research has energized faculty and students at the University of Texas Health Science Center’s School of Dentistry.

“I’ve been here a long time … And this building has generated a level of excitement within our School of Dentistry that I haven’t seen for a decade,” said the school’s dean, Dr. Bill Dodge.

Standing four stories tall and spanning 198,000 square feet, the dental school’s new facility will serve patients from across South Texas, university officials said. The structure houses the dental practices of the school’s faculty members. It also will be the place where the dental school’s students get their hands-on training once they’re ready to care for patients under faculty supervision.
Students and residents providing supervised care to patients do so at a reduced price, usually about one-third the amount of the fees charged by faculty.

Dental students will spend most of their time in the new building once they get midway through their second year of the four-year educational program, Dodge said.
The modern structure, at 8210 Floyd Curl Drive in the South Texas Medical Center, was formally dedicated Thursday. It includes a dental surgery operating room and an overnight recovery area that were built to hospital specifications, university officials said. The building’s four floors are equipped with more than 400 dental chairs. Each exam room and surgical area features extra-large monitors to allow up-close views of the care being provided.

The first two floors feature specialty care, including oral and maxillofacial surgery, geriatric dentistry, periodontics, prosthodontics and implants. The third and fourth floors feature general dentistry care.
“We have all specialties represented here,” Dodge said. Patients “referred for specialty treatment would not have to leave the building.”

The new building will improve education and provide better patient care, health science center President William Henrich said Thursday. It has been open to patients since July.
It became apparent the dental school needed a new home for its clinical practices because its original building, opened in the early 1970s, wasn’t equipped for technological advances in dental care, university officials said.

“Dentistry has changed — it’s become far more technologically centric,” Dodge said. “And we had great difficulties in trying to accommodate the new technology in our old facility.”
Upgrading the original facility and bringing it into compliance with new building codes would have driven up costs to almost the same price for new construction, Dodge said.
“We just needed a better environment for our patients, our students and our staff,” he said. “With diminishing state support and other support, we are more and more reliant on patient care revenues to maintain the quality of our programs.”

The older facility, located next to the health science center’s medical school and nursing school on the Long Campus, wasn’t as patient friendly, said Patrick Lew, a senior project manager for the UT System’s Office of Facilities, Planning and Construction.
“There were just large waiting areas for all the clinics,” Lew said of the dental school’s older building. “I think some of the clinics were even at capacity, and they had seating in the corridors for patients.” In the new space, each clinic has a separate waiting area.
State Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, said the center “represents the ability for people from all walks of life to have dental care.”

Menéndez noted that, as a young child, he received dental care at the original building after his mother, a nurse, moved to San Antonio and initially didn’t know where to take him for such services.
“That building, while it may have been old, was a place where people in San Antonio who would not know where to go, who to take their children to … they could go to be safe and get good dental care,” he said.

The new facility will allow the dental school to see increasing numbers of patients, Menéndez said.
“And I have to tell you, for me, that is the most important part,” he said.
Later this month, an open-air sky bridge will be installed to connect the building to the Medical Arts & Research Center next door, which houses the medical practices of the 700 physicians at UT Medicine San Antonio, the faculty practice of the health science center’s medical school. Those physicians care for more than 250,000 patients each year.
The sky bridge will provide more convenience — one-stop shopping of sorts — for patients seeking medical and dental care.

“We treat patients with many diagnoses that might affect or influence the way that we treat them,” Dodge said. “To be connected physically with our medical facility … we can refer patients for evaluation in any of the medical specialties and then have them come back to us.”
The dental school will continue using around 150,000 square feet of its original building on the Long Campus for offices, research space and student classrooms, Dodge said.
The dental school has a total enrollment of 600 to 620 students, including specialty trainees, residents and dental hygiene students, he said.

Source:  http://www.expressnews.com/business/health-care/article/UT-s-new-dental-center-to-care-for-more-patients-6497190.php

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