The Daily Tar Heel
Printing news. Raising hell. Since 1893.
Thursday, March 28, 2024 Newsletters Latest print issue

We keep you informed.

Help us keep going. Donate Today.
The Daily Tar Heel

Public dental clinic in Carrboro to close

Patients redirected to Hillsborough

It could be at least 10 years before Chapel Hill and Carrboro have a public dental clinic again.

About 2,000 patients will have to travel to Hillsborough to receive dental services until the county’s finances can recover enough to reopen one.

On Sept. 21, Orange County Commissioners voted to close one of two locations low-income and uninsured residents can visit to receive low-cost dental services.

The county health department runs the Carrboro clinic, located in Carr Mill Mall. The clinic must close before its lease runs out in June 2011.

The Hillsborough location will now serve all of Orange County, said Rosemary Summers, the county’s health department director.

The closing of the Carrboro clinic is a temporary move away from the dual-service model that Orange County uses for most of its health and social services.

Typically, one facility serves the southern part of the county; the other, the northern part.

The two clinics currently share a staff, so they cannot be open at the same time. The Carrboro location operates Monday through Tuesday while the Hillsborough clinic is open Wednesday through Friday.

The consolidated clinic will be open five days a week, with eight chairs.

“Now we can have more hours, more reliability,” said County Commissioner Barry Jacobs, who voted for the consolidation.

But Mike Nelson and Alice Gordon, the two county commissioners who voted against the closing, as well as Chapel Hill officials Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and Town Council member Laurin Easthom. They said they are worried about leaving the southern, more populated part of the county without a dental clinic.

“It’s a model of health care I don’t think anyone wants to follow,” said Easthom, who practices dentistry part-time. “People might put off prevention and end up with a more serious infection.”

The county health department hopes to have two separate, full-time facilities up and running by 2021, said Steve Yuhasz, county commissioner and member of the county board of health. He said the closing is only a temporary solution to alleviate budget constraints.

No specific plans about financing or constructing a second facility have been made, but the board of health said delaying the construction of a new clinic for 10 years will allow finances to recover.

The vote to close the Carrboro facility also displaced the Student Health Action Coalition dental clinic, which shares the Carr Mill Mall space.

The clinic is run by third-year students at the UNC School of Dentistry and operates at the Carrboro location from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on dates announced on their website.

Like the county facility it shares a roof with, the clinic provides dental care for those who cannot find it elsewhere, said Dr. Allen Samuelson, clinical associative professor of dental ecology at UNC.

Unlike the county clinic, the student-run clinic has no screening process for patients. They will see anyone who arrives at the clinic by 6 p.m., when a lottery decides who will be treated, Samuelson said.

The student-run clinic is seeking a new place to operate, but has nowhere in mind, Samuelson said. The coalition hosts the oldest student-run dental clinic in the state and one of the oldest in the country.

“I’m prayerful that we’ll find a location,” Samuelson said.

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.

To get the day's news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.

Special Print Edition
The Daily Tar Heel's Collaborative Mental Health Edition