Mobile dental van to park at first school next week
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on December 11, 2014 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MELISSA KEY
The "Miles of Smiles" mobile dental van will move to its first pilot school, Brogden Primary, next week, the county's health director says.
The mobile dental van acquired by the Wayne County Health Department earlier this year will be moved to its first school site next week, officials said Wednesday.
Health Director Davin Madden told the Board of Health that the van will arrive at Brogden Primary School on Tuesday.
"We're about to roll it out," he said. "We're very excited about the dental unit being over there."
It has been a long time coming, Madden added. It has taken the bulk of the year to secure funding and prepare the unit, which will be used to provide dental services for children.
The county commission was largely responsible for launching the project, allocating $170,000 for the purchase and upfitting. That was Phase One.
The 50-foot tractor trailer arrived over the summer and in the months since, efforts have been made to update software and make all the digital upgrades, considered Phase Two. Staff also have been trained on the new unit, Madden said, with the goal to have it on the road by year's end.
"We have made all the purchases, all the equipment we have needed. We got our wireless connected so Phase Two is complete," Madden said at last month's board meeting.
He said then that estimates had been for the van to be operational as early as October or as late as Jan 1. Since meeting with school officials, he suggested it might be preferred to wait until after the upcoming holidays to put the unit on the road, as there would only be a short stint beforehand, leaving the unit parked on school grounds while school was not in session.
"We're trying to just calculate the best time," he said. "The first school's ready. Once we get the software, we will move to Brogden Primary, then Carver, then Northeast Elementary. Those are our three pilot schools."
Board member and county commissioner Joe Daughtery said at the November meeting he would like to see the van in use "sooner rather than later."
"I would encourage you to go ahead and get it out. Look at it as a positive to have that Christmas break," he said, suggesting the extra time could be beneficial if they discovered the need "to work the bugs out."
Madden took that under advisement, returning this week with the announcement that plans had been made to move the van to the first pilot school.
The need for the unit has never been in question. Officials had already established that 50 percent of children in Wayne County, Medicaid children, did not receive any dental services this past year. The huge gap in dental care had justified providing a mobile dental program.
In other business on the meeting's agenda, the board adopted a policy allowing voting by email. After brief debate, the board approved the option in certain circumstances.
"If we don't have a quorum or things get kind of delayed, the purpose of even considering voting by email is not having a meeting, not to communicate but sometimes to speed up procedures that are fairly routine and need to be done," explained Dr. Allan Harvin, board chairman.
Madden said the option would be beneficial for "non-controversial" items where a quorum was needed -- voting on a fee or policy change, something that required prompt action that could not wait for another board meeting.
He added that there would be parameters for the policy, to prevent its being abused.
The function would be to allow for time-sensitive information to be handled and not as a replacement for a physical meeting, he said.
The board also discussed the amount of notice they would prefer to have to conduct an e-vote, agreeing on a 48-hour window for members to respond.