County dental clinic might lose Carrboro branch

David Sevedra takes his two little girls to the dentist once a year to get their teeth cleaned.

While Sevedra, who works in construction, can’t afford to maintain his own teeth at the Orange County dental clinic, he said he’s happy to keep his daughters’ teeth healthy and avoid expensive trips to the emergency room.

Orange County Dental Health Services, which provides care on a sliding cost scale in Carrboro and Hillsborough, is looking at closing the Carrboro branch where Sevedra’s daughters have been going for the last four years.

The Orange County Board of Commissioners has been asking the health department to cut back on costs and will discuss closing the Carrboro dental clinic for the second time in a year at today’s Board of Health meeting.

Orange County Health Director Rosemary Summers said she’s concerned that may be the only way to tighten the budget.

“We don’t have anywhere else to cut our budget without cutting services,” Summers said.

The Hillsborough dental clinic, which operates out of the county health department building, is open for half of the week while the Carrboro clinic is open the other half, operating out of an expensive rental space in Carr Mill Mall.

While the county already owns the building in Hillsborough, it spends around $62,000 a year on rent for the Carrboro branch.

“We have a lease that runs through sometime in 2011, so it’s not going to happen imminently anyway,” Commissioner Barry Jacobs said.

“But the issue is that we can’t afford to keep both dental clinics open full time. So one is open part time, and the other is open even less time. The idea would be to have one place where we would have a more robust service,” Jacobs said.

It’s already difficult to get an appointment in Carrboro because the clinic can only afford to stay open for two days each week, Summers said.

Sevedra said he has waited in line for an hour before and failed to get an appointment.

“It’s really hard to evaluate if we were there full time, would that be a busier clinic than the Hillsborough clinic?” Summers said.

“The Hillsborough clinic has traditionally been a very busy clinic because there are fewer dentists in the northern part of the county that serve the uninsured and Medicaid.”

The health department will present the statistics of both clinics at the Board of Health meeting and will recommend to the commissioners whether closing the Carrboro branch makes sense.

Although the recession has forced the county to subsidize more and more patients’ dental care — cost is determined by an individual patient’s income — Jacobs said that closing the Carrboro branch is not meant to cut services.

Cutting back on rental fees would rather leave more funds available to help the county afford subsidized patient care, as long as the patients go to Hillsborough for it.

The county might consider providing transportation directly to the Hillsborough clinic, Jacobs said.

“We don’t want to leave people out just because we can’t afford two part-time facilities that don’t satisfy anyone,” Jacobs said.

The Student Health Action Coalition provides free dental services by UNC School of Dentistry students out of the Carr Mill Mall clinic several times a month. If the clinic closed, they would have to move.

“We provide that space for them to a very nominal fee every year, so that is one of the other things we’re evaluating,” Summers said.

Jacobs said he hopes that dental students can fill the vacuum that might be left if the Carrboro clinic closes.

“We would certainly be interested in working with the dental school to extend its service,” Jacobs said.

“There’s going to be a gap. If they could help us fill it, it’s going to be great.”

As for Sevedra, his daughters will get at least one more teeth cleaning in Carrboro if commissioners close it when the lease runs out.



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