By Beth Christian Broschart
The Parsons Advocate
HAMBLETON – St. George Clinic CEO Paul Wamsley said the school-based health center, located at Tucker Valley Elementary/Middle School is offering a new service. He said the center is offering dental services and will soon offer those services at St. George Medical Clinic’s main office.
“When we applied to add the change in scope to add the new site for the school-based health center, oral health money availability came out at the same time,” Wamsley said. “We attached a breezeway and the $350,000 will pay for the chairs, supplies and start-up funds for the dental clinic. One of the chairs will be used for a dental hygienist and three for dentists.”
Wamsley said there will be four dental aids and two office desks. “This has increased our employee count and is helping locally as well,” Wamsley said.
He said in Tucker County, that 42 percent of students under the age of 18 were not receiving annual preventative dental care and said some of the students have never had any dental care at all.
“This will be their first treatment ever for dental services,” Wamsley said. “Medicaid will pay for dental care for those covered under the age of 18. So I don’t know if the issue with no dental care was because of transportation issues, work related issues or lack of knowledge. With the school clinic being located at the school there are no worries. The student walks over to the clinic and when completed, goes back to their class.”
Wamsley said parents are saying how much they like the dental services offered at the school. He said they projected to put a school-based health center at each of the three county schools. He said with the budget they have, they could only put in one center, and it was required it go to the school with the highest budget first.
“The school based health center at Tucker Valley Elementary/Middle School was three years in the making,” Wamsley said. “The center officially opened Oct. 12 to seeing patients at the school-based health center. People originally thought the center was open only for the school, but it is open to the public as well. We have tried to advertise that.”
Wamsley said the center is receiving a lot of patients from the community, and said actually the general public outnumbers the amount of students who utilize the center. “We have lots of teachers who use the clinic and we hope students will start using it more and hope it helps lower the truancy rate.”
He said the daily patient count at the school based health center at Tucker Valley is 20 to 25 patients per day. “That’s huge for a school-based health center,” he said. “And it continues to grow. Our new patient count has almost doubled.”
Additional information about the St. George Clinic and its satellite offices is available by calling 304-478-3339 or online at www.stgeorgeclinic.org.
