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Charitable clinics help provide dental care for indigent patients of all ages in the Tulsa area.
They arrive hours before the doors open at 5 a.m., wrapped in blankets or huddled in sleeping bags against the freezing weather. Some have driven three or four hours to reach their destination. Babies and small children, hardworking parents, the elderly in wheelchairs — all have come to be treated for routine dental needs. A cleaning, a filling, an extraction. Procedures most of us consider a routine right paid mostly by our dental insurance.
But these people have no such safety net. Low income, poverty level — call it what you will, but they simply cannot afford a trip to the dentist.
But here the care is free. And 2,000 needy individuals will stand and wait, then sit and wait inside a huge facility, a 90-chair M.A.S.H.-style dental center, all to receive basic care during a two-day clinic. Care given by volunteer dentists and other health professionals. This scenario has repeated itself time after time in 13 states over the last 10 years. In February 2010, the Oklahoma Dental Association will add this state to the list of those conducting a MOM — Mission of Mercy — clinic.
And Dr. Rieger Wood III, Oklahoma Dental Association president and OKMOM chair, cannot wait. He speaks with enthusiasm, and, yes, a few tears, as he explains the program that he says takes an entire community to execute.
The Mission of Mercy began in Virginia and grew so large that participating state associations eventually formed the American Dentists Care Foundation Mission of Mercy to maintain, store and transport the host of necessary equipment and instruments, which dental associations can rent when conducting their own MOM clinics. 
Nevertheless, Wood says, the Delta Dental Charitable Fund is co-sponsoring the clinic by underwriting costs associated with the event. The Tulsa clinic at the Tulsa Convention Center runs Feb. 5-6. The Tulsa Convention Center is providing limited free parking adjacent to the building. BAMA, El Rancho Grande, Mazzio’s, McDonalds, QuikTrip and Rib Crib have agreed to provide meals. Spanish and Vietnamese translators, pharmacists, entertainers and everyday citizens and students will join dental and medical professionals as volunteers.
“Tulsa is among the worst cities for the least amount of care for indigent folks in Oklahoma,” Wood says.
He sees Mission of Mercy as one step toward changing this situation.
Tulsa is not without charitable dental clinics. Neighbor for Neighbor, Morton Health Clinic and a soon-to-open clinic at Catholic Charities supply services, along with Eastern Oklahoma Donated Dental Services (EODDS), a charitable organization founded six years ago by a group of Tulsa area dentists and professionals.
Executive Director Pam Beard says EODDS provides $2.46 million in services with its approach. Instead of patients going to a free clinic, they go to a dentist’s office. This year, 232 dentists in the 918 area code’s 23 counties will see patients free of charge. Area laboratories deeply discount the costs of their services, which, along with administrative costs, are paid for through donations.
Beard says EODDS concentrates on two patient groups: the mentally and physically disabled and the frail, age 65-plus elderly who cannot afford dental care.
“We receive 25 to 50 requests daily for help,” Beard says, with a waiting list of 1,950 people.
Most patients needing removable prosthetics (dentures) wait two to three months to be seen. The waiting list is about four years for “complete restorative dental care,” says Beard, which could involve several procedures and visits.
“The last two years our 918 dentists have surpassed all other single-state charitable dental programs in the donated dollar amount and number of patients seen,” Beard says.
To learn more, visit OkMOM.org or EODDS.org.
