DENT Story: A Pregnant Woman Receives Vital Dental Care

The initial visit to the ER doesn’t always mean the dental patient will accept the resources offered the first time. In the case of a 31-year-old woman with right and left lower teeth pain who was referred from the ER to the DENT Program, she received antibiotics and her abscess appeared to have cleared. However, pain and abscesses almost always return with a vengeance.

Unfortunately, the woman did not return DENT calls with offers of dental appointments the next day.  DENT staff continued to call and text and even mailed a letter, reminding her that she was Apple Health eligible and that the insurance would pay for her dental care. Still no response.

A little over a month later, she called in pain with a very swollen face. She was newly pregnant and very ill and needed emergency dental care. She was very concerned about the pain and swelling but even more worried about the possible effect on her unborn child. In crisis, she became motivated to call. Luckily, she kept the DENT phone number. 

Both the Unify and CHAS Clinics (FQHCs) offer immediate dental appointments to pregnant women because they are committed to assisting in any way to ensure healthy births. DENT staff was able to schedule the woman the following day with the Unify Clinic for emergency dental care.

The woman stated, “I am so thankful you did not give up on me after not calling back last month. I was in a bad situation and just couldn’t think about my teeth. I started to feel better and I thought the tooth problem was over. I was so wrong.”

Announcement: Warming Center Transportation

Tonight, Pastor Stephen Johnson and the volunteers from United Methodist Church, on 3rd and Howard,  will transport folks to the warming center located at the Salvation Army from 7:15-8:15 pm.

They will return to the warming center at 6:45-7:45 am to transport folks back to the United Methodist Church.

If you know someone who needs a warm place to go tonight, please direct them to the United Methodist Church on 3rd and Howard.

Official Designation as an Accountable Community of Health

You may have heard a collective “Woohoo” from the BHT team yesterday when the Health Care Authority officially designated Better Health Together as an Accountable Community of Health. I can’t help but think of Sally Fields: “You like me … you like me!” 

Click here to read the official designation announcement.

We are really proud of the work our region has accomplished. We have convened the right players around the table: rurals and urbans, health systems and human services organizations, philanthropy, government and many other people and organizations that will be required to make our community radically healthier. We have come together as a region and prioritized five key areas . I wish I could say that our first year of forming was the hard work, but it really was not. Instead, the hard work is ahead, but I am optimistic about what is possible.

We had planned to host our 2nd Annual Health Champions Regional Gathering on Thursday, November 19th, but Mother Nature had a different idea. Due to the severe weather impacts throughout our region, we rescheduled this gathering to January 14th. Our goals and plans stay the same, we will just be a few weeks later launching the second phase of our Accountable Community of Health as well as the development of our Regional Health Action Plans. This fast-paced, highly interactive day will include design sessions for each of our key priority areas and a community mapping of the key activities that will be required to make meaningful and impactful progress.

After the Gathering, we will launch a series of Community Action Teams to further develop the community linkage maps and begin the hard work of transforming the system.  We know this is no easy task, but I know our region’s “can do” spirit will again make us a leader in this work. If you would like to attend please let Casey know you will be there at casey@betterhealthtogehter.org.

Open Enrollment Launched November 1st

There was a lot less fanfare than our first Open Enrollment period and fortunately a lot less technical glitches—but BHT is at it again. We want to make sure every person in our region has health insurance. As of March 31, 2015 we were under 5%; our goal is to get that number down to 2% this year. We can do it!

Thanks to our robust Navigator Network of 125 on-the-ground partners, our dedicated BHT Navigator team and our plan to participate in more than 40 community events, we are confident we will meet our goal to enroll/reenroll 4,000 people between November 1 and January 31. We are focused this year on individuals who are eligible for Qualified Health Plans; these are the people who can are eligible for a tax subsidy to purchase health insurance.

Insurance Opportunity by County

Accountable Community of Health

Accountable Communities of Health (ACHs) are a key component of of Healthier Washington, our state’s coordinated effort to help ensure better health, better care and lower costs for Washington residents.

Better Health Together serves as lead for the Spokane region ACH, a community-based partnership working across all sectors and all seven of our counties, to develop shared priority, strategies and action plans to improve health.

Visit the Regional Impact Map to see our network of ACH partners.