Many dentists don't accept non-English speakers; Health Department fills growing need

The Lincoln-Lancaster Health Department dental program is serving a growing number of people, and a higher percentage of people who don’t speak English in part because the program provides interpretation services.

The health center provides local interpreters for six languages. Three people speak Spanish; three speak Arabic; one speaks Karin, Burmese and Thai; and one speaks Kurdish. The department has other bilingual employees working in other areas who can interpret for Vietnamese-speaking patients.

The agency uses phone services for interpreting in other languages, says Judy Halstead, department director.

Many dentists don't accept people who cannot speak English because of the added cost of interpreting services. 

Medicaid requires dentists and doctors who accept Medicaid patients to provide interpretation free of charge for patients they accept.

Ethics policies also require that patients must understand the treatment in order to give informed consent. "Ethically we have to make sure they understand what it is, what they are giving consent for," Halstead said.

The health department can provide the service at less cost because it has staff available for many of the languages spoken by local refugees. The phone services cost $38 an hour. 

The department does not use a patient's family members unless they insist, "because we don’t know if they have the medical or dental background to interpret accurately,” she said.

The need for interpretation services is evident in the changing demographics of the client load.

In fiscal year 2008-09 slightly more than half of the 2,791 dental clients at the health department were white/English speaking. Six years later about 70 percent of the 3,568 clients are ethnic minorities or white non-English speaking.

Christensen raising money

City Councilman Roy Christensen has already started raising money for his council race in two years. Guests at his kickoff included Gov. Pete Ricketts and Lt. Gov. Mike Foley.

Christensen said it’s almost impossible to run a business, do his job as a councilman, campaign and raise money at the same time. So he’s getting the money-raising part out of the way.

Though there is often speculation that Christensen has his eye on the mayor’s job, Christensen says he is focused on running for a second term on the council in the spring of 2017.

PulsePoint app popular

The new PulsePoint app is "the digital equivalent of someone yelling, 'is there a doctor in the house? But with much better results,'" says the California firefighter/paramedic who led the development of the app.

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And it's been a hit in Lincoln, where 3,241 people had added the PulsePoint app to their phone by Tuesday morning, less than two weeks after a news conference announcing its use.

The PulsePoint Foundation suggests 1 percent of a city's population adopting the app in the first year as a goal. In Lincoln, that would be 2,730.

“We hit that in the first week. I'm hoping for 5,000 at the end of the first year,” said Public Safety Director Tom Casady.

The app notifies users who are within walking distance (defined as a quarter-mile) of someone having a heart attack in a public place.

The PulsePoint app can help someone with no training perform hands-only CPR by providing the beat for the cardiac pressure along with a metronome that keeps the time for 100 compressions per minute.

And if you receive an alert, it tells the location of the nearest known Automatic External Defibrillator.

It also has an assortment of other features, including alerts for local traffic crashes and fires. 

Add the app to your phone. Let’s see how quickly we can reach 5,000.

Source:http://journalstar.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/interpreters-a-draw-for-dental-patients-who-need-them/article_98558308-2cf6-5049-bff8-d20a8759e119.html

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The DS 6000 Scanner can be used for all dental applications such as copings, full contour crowns, bridges up to 14 units, implants, implant bars and dentures.