By SUSAN JONES
The move to close the UPMC Presbyterian Dental Center at Montefiore Hospital and transfer those clients to the Pitt School of Dental Medicine patient services has raised some concerns, but Marnie Oakley, dean of the dental school, said the transition has benefits for patients, dental residents and staff.
The Montefiore facility, which closed on March 21, was primarily staffed by Pitt dental residents doing their one-year general practice residency. Oakley said one of the facts left out of some of the news coverage about the closing is that Pitt decided to close the residency program at Montefiore in July 2023 and relocate those residents to the University’s dental clinic.
“So a decent amount of those patients are probably already within our system,” Oakley said.
Any former UPMC patients who still want to transfer will be fast-tracked into the Pitt dental clinic system for immediate screenings and treatment, Oakley said.
UPMC spokesperson Susan Manko told the Tribune-Review that, “We expect less than 2,000 patients total will need to transition their care, all of whom can easily be accommodated by the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine. Measures are in place to ensure that this transition will be as seamless as possible for patients.’’
Oakley said the Pitt dental clinic handles around 7,000 patients a month, which is a much higher capacity than a dental office with two or three practitioners. Many dentists in private practice have long wait times for new patients or simply aren’t taking any new patients, Oakley said. Pitt doesn’t have that issue, she said, because they have about 450 providers between the students, residents and faculty. New patient screenings are done every week.
A report from the PA Coalition for Oral Health found that 15.5 percent of practices were currently not accepting any new patients, and the average wait to a new patient dental appointment is around 55 days.
About 85 percent of the patients at Montefiore were on medical assistance, such as Medicare or Medicaid, Oakley said. While the Pitt clinic is not free, its fees are much lower than in private practices, she said. “We are the safety net clinic for medical assistance patients. It is part of our long-term identity to service the patients of our community and medical assistance patients are part of that.”
For the dental residents, being at the Pitt clinic will allow them to rotate through several specialties during their residencies, instead of just general practice. At any given time, there are about 75 residents across nine dental residency programs at Pitt.
Oakley said the Montefiore location “was not giving the residents the breadth of experience in comprehensive dentistry that was required by the program. … We have better access to patients who need a high breadth of comprehensive dental needs, not to mention we have these eight other specialty programs that these residents can rotate in and out of, and get a high level of educational experience adjacent to someone who’s studying to be a specialist in that area.”
Most of the staff from the Montefiore center were absorbed by Pitt’s dental school at comparative salaries and better benefits, Oakley said. “We were able to really talk to some of those families about the tuition benefit and it really made them very happy to think about being transferred to the Pitt domain.”
She said many of the non-resident dental providers at the Montefiore center were already Pitt employees.
What Pitt’s dental services offer
The Pitt School of Dental Medicine offers patient care across all areas of dentistry, Oakley said. “We’re very comprehensive in that way.” And all of these services are available to Pitt faculty, staff and students.
Under the supervision of faculty, dental hygiene students do annual exams and cleanings, and dental students treat comprehensive dental needs in the student clinic, just like general dentists do in private practice, she said. These services might take a bit longer than they would at a private practice, “but what the patients seem to feel comforted with is the fact that every step of the way that work is being tracked by a specialized faculty member, someone who’s highly qualified in their field.”
This is also true in the resident program, which focuses on specialty care such as endodontics, orthodontics and more.
“When I’m teaching on the clinic floor, my objective is to keep patients safe and have us have great care and have the students have a good learning experience,” Oakley said. “Your care is checked over and over every step of the way.”
The next level above that is University Dental Health Services, where you can opt to be seen by a faculty member as your primary provider. All these levels of care are available at the School of Dental Medicine in Salk Hall.
Dealing with shortages
Oakley said one of the reason that it’s hard to get appointments with dentists in private practice is a shortage of dentists and dental auxiliary personnel, like assistants, lab technicians and hygienists.
Of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania, she said 50 of them, mostly in rural areas, are marked as underserved — “they don’t have the the level of dentists, the number of dentists, to meet the needs.”
Then one-third of dentists nationwide, according to the American Dental Association, report they do not have full appointment schedules because of a shortage of dental auxiliaries. The number of auxiliary personnel is down by about 8 percent since the pandemic and that’s expected to increase, Oakley said.
Part of her goal as a new dean — she took over last fall — “is really to have a positive impact on expanding our footprint of Pitt Dental Medicine into rural areas.”
One way the school is addressing those shortages is by developing a new dental assistant apprenticeship program. The 14-month program, during which students get paid, is graduating its first cohort this week.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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