NC Health News: This Dentist and His Teams Come to their Patients. Their Focus is Special Needs Population

By Anne Blythe | February 11, 2020

Excerpt from the article:

Milner, a dentist in North Carolina for the past 45 years, was set up with two portable dental chairs and two hygienists and all their equipment in a conference room at a Cone Health clinic in Greensboro.

They see 600 patients as part of a partnership with the infectious disease center, which draws from a community of people with compromised immune systems.

Some are infected with HIV or have progressed to developing AIDS. Others have “undetectable viral loads.”

Milner explains that some of the people on the patient list have been shunned by dentists in private practice. Others are too worried about potential stigmatization or an outing of their diagnosis that they, themselves, choose to steer clear of such offices.

Many live on the margins, too. A lack of transportation plagues some, making it difficult to get to appointments or keep them.

Some might be homeless and forced to spend the better part of each day looking for a place to sleep, occasionally landing in a cheap motel or make-shift shelter where there is great potential for altercations.

Read the full article: https://www.northcarolinahealthnews.org/2020/02/11/dentist-and-his-teams-come-to-their-patients-their-focus-is-special-needs-populations/