On March
18, 2020, the American Dental Association (ADA) issued guidance to Dental
Practices across the United States, in response to the Covid-19 outbreak. The
ADA guidance suggests Dentists see patients only with urgent or emergent
(emergency) dental issues. The ADA guidance instructs Dentists to postpone all
routine hygiene and non-emergency care.
ACCESS
Family Care established a Team to review this guidance and the best interest of
our customers. This review led to the very difficult decision to suspend all
elective, routine hygiene, and non-emergency dental procedures until the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ADA, and / or other regulatory
bodies indicate it is responsible to reschedule patients. This suspension of
care is effective March 23, 2020. We sincerely apologize to our customers as we
know this will be a major inconvenience and gap in healthcare.
With
great pain and heartache, this suspension of customer care has led ACCESS
Family Care to layoff sixty (60) employees assigned to Dental Services and
patient care. We cannot express how hard we attempted to avoid this devastation
to our Team. Our Dental Care Team is one of the most caring and compassionate
in the Nation. Our Dental Team is the third largest Community Health Dental
Team in the State of Missouri. They serve with empathy and compassion every
day. They love their patients.
ACCESS
Family Care is hopeful the ADA guidance, pandemic conditions, and economic
climate quickly recover. We are hopeful to recall as many or all of our laid
off Team, as soon as possible.
We will
maintain a small Dental Team, at each of our Dental Clinics, to see urgent and
emergent (emergency) patients, those with pain and swelling. Patients may email
info@accessfamilycare.org, or visit our website at www.accessfamilycare.org to request an emergency
appointment.
ACCESS
Family Care (ACCESS), was founded in 1996 as a Federally Qualified Health
Center (FQHC) for the purpose of increasing access to primary health care for
those who lack medical insurance coverage. As an FQHC, ACCESS receives a 330
Federal grant from the Bureau of Primary Health Care designed to offset the
expenses associated with providing sliding fee discounts to patients who
demonstrate economic need.
ACCESS
Family Care is headquartered in Neosho, Missouri, with Medical and Dental
Clinics in Joplin, Neosho, Anderson, and Cassville; Medical Clinics in Lamar
and Aurora; and a Dental Clinic in Carthage. ACCESS Family Care served more
than 26,000 patients in extreme southwest Missouri, in 2019.
