Appointing Children in Mobile Dental Clinic in an Urban Area

In August 2000 the first child was treated on the Tooth Bus, a 3 chair mobile dental clinic developed by Children's Hospital in New Orleans. Without fanfare, all six urban locations visited by the Tooth Bus were appointed one month ahead within 6 months, and appointed 3 months ahead before August 2001. However no show rate has always been between 20 & 30 percent.

Methods:

In 2003 we piloted an open-ended inter view at one of the 6 locations to learn about the parents attitudes about seeing a dentist on a Bus.

Results:

50 parents were interviewed. About half indicated that they learned about the Bus through a friend or relative. Half indicated they had seen the bus in the Toy-R-Us parking lot and had stopped in or called for an appointment. The parents estimated it took them an average 13 minutes to get to the Bus. If they had seen a dentist previously they estimated that it took them an average of 21 minutes to get to that previous dentist. Less than half had seen a dentist previously.

Conclusions:

We then expanded the questionnaire to include information on who brought the child and started calling the parents who missed their child's appointment for the same information. We also plotted the actual distance from the home to the Tooth Bus. These findings will be detailed in the presentation.