Congressman Jared Huffman in front of the Burre Dental Center in Eureka | Photos: Stephanie McGeary
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If you’ve tried to make a dentist appointment in Humboldt lately, you’re probably aware that it can take months and, especially for low-income folks, it can be difficult to find a local dentist office that can see you at all. Soon it may be just a little bit easier to find a place that can fix your teeth, with the Burre Dental Center — a branch of Open Door Community Health Services — planning an expansion that could increase capacity by up to 8,000 visits per year.
The expansion will be funded by $1 million from the Consolidated Appropriations Act – an omnibus spending bill signed by the president last week, more than $11.5 million of which Congressman Jared Huffman secured to fund community projects in Northern California, including several in Humboldt County. On Thursday morning Huffman joined representatives from Open Door Community Health Services to tour the Burre Dental Center and learn more about the expansion plans.
The $1 million will be used to add six additional stations to the facility, as well as an additional lab, a new call center and administrative offices. Cheyenne Spetzler, senior vice president of development for Open Door Community Health, said that Open Door acquired the additional space next to the current Burre Center several years ago, and she is grateful that the center will finally be able to expand there.
In addition to adding the new space and equipment, Open Door plans to
put the funding toward recruitment efforts and hopes to hire two
additional dentists and multiple dental assistants. Five thousand dollars will be invested in the in-house training and certification of someone who wants to become a dental assistant, Sarah Ross, vice president of operations for Open Door, said during the tour. Ross added that the dental center has seen a major decrease in staff since the pandemic.
“We noticed that during COVID we had a real drought in dental assistants in particular,” Ross said during the tour. “We went down by about one third, and are still recovering to come back out of that.”
Samantha Hani, administrative site director for the Burre Dental Center, added that the center is still short about six employees. Most days there is that is enough staff to operate the center, but if someone calls in sick there is no cushion. With the center operating with a skeleton crew, wait times for patients increase, and sometimes days the center has to call patients to reschedule because there is just not enough staff on to accommodate everyone, Hani said.
The new expansion should not only take some of the strain off of the current staff and patients, but will also allow the center to accept new patients. Hani said that the center expects to increase capacity by between 5,600 and 8,000 visits per year. Hani could not say yet exactly how or when new patients might sign up, and said there will be more information about that as the expansion moves forward.
The expanded capacity will be largely focused on children’s dentistry and preventative care, although the center will take patients of all ages, the staff said. The age makeup of new patients will largely depend on what dentists the center can recruit, and whether or not they are able to hire specialists in children’s dentistry.
Exactly how long it will take for the new plans to become reality is still uncertain, but it will likely be a few months before the building expansion can begin. With the conceptual design in place, Speltzer said, the next steps will be to take the plans to an architect for a design. The design will then need to be taken to the City of Eureka for permitting approval.
When asked by Huffman if the $1 million would be enough to cover the full expansion, Spetzler said that it should be. But if the project does go over, Open Door will be able to make up the rest of the funding.
Following the tour, Huffman told the press how impressed he was with the Burre Dental Center’s expansion proposal, adding that he was very happy to help secure the funding for this project.
“We tried to look for projects that have the most bang for the buck and this is one of them,” Huffmann told the press outside of the Burre Dental Center. “For a million dollars to provide this additional capacity to a facility that meets such a critical community need is really a great example of how these dollars can make an impact.”
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