by Dr. Stephen Glass
When I was first inspired to become a dentist in high school, I never imagined that I would be doing tele-dentistry during a time of a pandemic. Now leading our dental team at Mountain Family Health Centers, I have had first-hand experience in this new way to deliver care to our patients.
After completing dental school at Virginia Commonwealth University, I moved to Colorado to work for Mountain Family and care for underserved populations. To protect our staff and patients, during the COVID-19 outbreak we have shifted our care to tele-dentistry while still treating urgent and emergency cases in our Rifle and Edwards clinics.
Recently, our dental team was able to take care of Jose both through tele-dentistry and an in-person visit. I consulted with Jose, age 30, in the comfort of his own home via video-chat. It was nice to evaluate him at home according to his schedule. He was able to show me the spontaneous bleeding in his gums. At that point I knew I had to refer him to our clinic in Rifle where Estela Lujan-Ortiz, one of our hygienists, helped him.
Our team, including four dentists and five hygienists, stands by ready to assist you. To make a tele-dentistry appointment or to receive urgent care, please call Mountain Family at 970-945-2840.
We look forward to best serve you and hope to return to normal operations soon. Looking ahead, we are enthusiastic to open school-based dentistry centers in Basalt, Carbondale, and Glenwood Springs in the fall of 2020.
If you wish to make a gift to support our work, please click here.
Working together, we will get through this time and bring healthy smiles back to our patients’ faces.