For the past years, the strategy of providing dental care through the use of mobile vans had sparked different discussions and debates. It was indeed an innovation and a mile step for the field of dentistry since it has mixed the purpose of making dental care available to communities suffering lack of access to a good quality dental care to the effort of innovating things through science and technology. This process, although still similar to the traditional model of dentistry, still keeps on committing to the fact that dental care should be provided to all types of communities and not just for the people who have access on it.
In the traditional model of dentistry, a patient makes an appointment, travels to the office, receives treatment, and returns home. To achieve effectiveness of this process, there are two general factors that need to be met. First, a patient must have the will to travel even hours to the dental clinic for care and secondly, the appointment must be scheduled at a time and place that agrees to the patient’s needs. As an alternative, the patient can arrive at a walk-in clinic without prior appointment and of course, the guarantee that he or she will be assisted right away due to uncontrollable factors such as the number of patients and the length of the process care applied to each patient, all these factors due to the lack of a single thing which is setting up an appointment. As a result, the patient tends to receive symptomatic care only which leads to more needs that should be addressed when the symptoms return.
At this point, I believe we can already notice the fine line that home dental or mobile dentistry is creating from the traditional process. It is one of those innovations that do not only focus on enhancing what a process can do but instead it targeted the shortcomings of the process to provide solutions that will meet the need of the general audience.
Why Would You Choose Home Dental?
The two different scenarios stated above only root to a single important word which is “convenience”. With home dental, the convenience of receiving dental care is just right in front of your door. All you have to do is enter the mobile dental clinic located in your community, in most cases, just a walk across the street from your home.
The process goes like this: the dentist and staffs can arrive at a facility where the patients are already located, such as a school, community center, elder care facility, or manufacturing facility. The patients are then given the treatment on site with only little interruption of their daily routine or without the complicated issues about the transportation of the disabled and elderly. With only a short process of providing care, more patients will tend to receive their dental needs without the fear of only getting symptomatic care.
In addition to the convenience that mobile dentistry can offer, patients also benefit most especially with managing their time because they can keep up with what they have in plan for the day until their turn to walk in the dental van is ready. On the other hand, owners and staffs of mobile dentistry also achieve a win-win situation since there is no downtime during the working day caused by a late patient or a broken appointment.
How Is Mobile Dentistry Set Up?
Home dental or mobile dentistry is achieved through dental vans that are engineered to provide long term process of care to patients of different kinds. Mobile dental clinics come in many designs and sizes. Once you enter the dental van through a staircase that can also be removed to allow disabled patients in wheelchair to get in, the clinic designed for maximum effectiveness and economy would have two treatment rooms with an intraoral X-ray in each, a central area for sterilization, a waiting area, a staff restroom, a panorex, and central suction and compressed air systems. All these facilities must be fully self-contained and self-supported with enough generator capacity to power the facility, as well as fresh and wastewater storage.
In the process of home dental or mobile dentistry, the convenience is really served in purpose. No time is being wasted behind because these scenarios have already been planned to reduce more stakes of shortcomings and downfalls that might affect operations and treatments. Moreover, mobile dentistry provides much-needed care and absolutely increases the access to care for the patients that are not gifted with availability of significant resources.
Continuously, most home dental provides high-quality care that might be rooted from innovation but still sticking with the traditional way of applying business principles in the practice and reassuring that strict systems are being followed in every operation.