Dental Reimbursement Program - Lane Community College’s clinical sites address the comprehensive oral health care needs of patients living with HIV in Oregon. The LCC Dental Clinic is part of the Health Professions Division at Lane Community College (LCC) in Eugene Oregon, and consists of both dental hygiene and dental assisting programs, along with a professional restorative dental clinic. The clinic provides low-cost, comprehensive oral health care services to the community. All patients are served equally. The LCC Dental Clinic also provides outreach to patients in southern Oregon by utilizing a clinic site at Rogue Community College (RCC), Oregon (170 miles south). During COVID travel restrictions, students of the Community College could not travel out of Lane County. If patients from southern Oregon needed services at LCC, we worked with Case Managers to bring them to Eugene. There was a concerted effort to reach out to additional HIV positive patients previously not seen in our clinic who live north of Eugene in Marion, Benton and Linn County. These patients were more often Spanish Speaking and through translation services we ran both weekday and Saturday weekend clinics for this population. The dental clinic site has 19 chairs which were privatized to allow for the highest protection from aerosol service. Oregon Health Science University (OHSU) fourth year dental students rotated in to provide restorative services. This arrangement started in September 2020 and was urgently needed because of the large number of dentists who retired or were unwilling to do services without a COVID vaccine on the market. Dental hygiene students provided comprehensive periodontal and preventive care along with restorative services within their scope of practice. Dental assisting students work with dentists providing restorative treatment. All dental program students work with patients within the extent of licensure and credentials as a student in an Oregon dental education program. Because the Rogue Community College 6 chair clinical site was out of reach for this period, if southern Oregon patients could not receive their care within their region, they were given service at our main Eugene clinic. Because of the distance traveled, mindfulness was placed on maximizing the services to include urgent restorative, hygiene and prosthodontic care all within one journey.
