Free dental program for Lee adults expanding this fall

A small, volunteer dental services for uninsured adults in Lee County will get a long-sought boost in staff and dentists when it merges with the "We Care" United Way/Salvation Army medical program in the next month or so.

Project Dentists Care, which treats patients in the back room The Salvation Army's meals kitchen in Fort Myers, has a waiting list of hundreds. Its collaboration with We Care will provide the program with a full-time appointment scheduler and, its organizers hope, more dental specialists willing to volunteer their time.

The dental program was founded by retired dentist Bill Truax, who has spent the last few years scrambling to find volunteers and equipment. His three-chair clinic usually treats a few dozen patients a week.

"We're going to go after getting a lot more dental support than we've had," Truax told me last week.

We Care is a program that refers low-income patients to medical specialists willing to offer free treatment. Patients must be uninsured (and ineligible for Medicaid or other programs) and at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level — about $23,340 for an individual.

Uninsured Lee County residents with dental emergencies commonly head to hospital ERs, which are ill-equipped to help them.

Even so, it's become an increasing problem for hospitals. A Florida Public Health Institute report earlier this year counted 139,000 dental patients at ERs in 2012, a 6.4 percent increase over the previous year. The price tag: about $141 million. Lee County had 4,456 such cases in 2012, about a 1.3 percent increase over 2011, according to that report.

Lee County otherwise has few options for adults unable to pay for dental care.

Rally on C-sections

Advocates for better maternity care plan to demonstrate next week outside of Cape Coral Hospital to call attention to high rates of cesarean sections at U.S. hospitals.

The Sept. 1 "Rally to Improve Birth" follows a highly publicized dispute a Cape Coral woman had with Bayfront Health Port Charlotte over her desire to attempt a vaginal birth despite her previous C-sections, commonly referred to as a VBAC.

Bayfront deemed it too medically risky and refused to help. The hospital also threatened to get the Florida Department of Children and Families involved. The woman, Jennifer Goodall, later had a C-section at Cape Coral Hospital.

Vaginal births are generally considered safer than surgical C-sections. But roughly a third of all deliveries in Lee are cesareans.

"We are not protesting LMHS, however we are calling attention to a lack of VBAC access (which is a provider issue), and we will be discussing the actions of Bayfront," organizer Megan Nickel-Martin said in an email.

— Compiled by Frank Gluck