I had not been to visit the Dayton VA Medical Center since the had to close their dental clinic to test patients who had possibly  been exposed to Aids and Hepatitis by a dentist who rarely changed his gloves in the course of seeing multiple patients.

The press coverage did report that there had been a thorough house-cleaning of the administrative and clinical staff whose dedicated political correctness escalaqted to dereliction.  But I was interested in ascertaining the attitudes of the staff members who represent the “Face of the Dayton Veterans’ Medical Center” toward the average veteran seeking help.

My first surprise was that there had been a marked increase in the amount of automobile parking.  New lots, crowd control fences, etc—more than ever required before.  The long walk to the front door was rewarded by my discovery that a new free valet parking service had been established to help ease access from the improved, and expanded parking areas.

Once inside, I checked out the Pharmacy area, Emergency Room and the Prime Care unit where the clinical medicine rubber meets the road.

I had a simple request and presented it to three staff members in those three areas.  Each staff member was courteous in handing me off to another department to possibly fulfill my request.  The Pharmacy was in error as to how my request would be expedited if I simply went to the emergency room and saw a physician to review my case.

The Emergency room sent me to Prime Care, where I learned that by waiting two or so more hours, the only physician on duty who could see me might be disposed to fulfilling my request.

I spent about an hour and three quarters getting to that final "no" and politely excusing myself to await my next appointment which I was informed was the soonest I could be seen, (failing a medical emergency) seven weeks hence.

There was no emotional affect expressed by any staff members, I encountered.  They were efficient in executing the algorithms that prescribe the flow of patients within the VA System—but there was precious little Milk of Human Kindness. 

I think the enlargement of the parking lots should have been the clue.  For whatever reason, these people are burned out.  Being helpful, kind or concerned is beyond their concept of what is required by their government sinecure.  I had the impression that the patients were seen by the staff as annoyances to be endured until quitting time.

Indeed, in Prime Care the only smile I observed was on the face of departing receptionist on her way out of the door going home.

If you want to see a Preview of the Coming Attractions of The Affordable Health Care Act- you can catch it, daily, throughout the Dayton Veterans Medical Center—but, believe me, this is one feature you’re going to want to skip.

A few weeks ago I noticed an exultant photo of Eva in the Sunday New York Times Travel section.  In the photo she was caught mid-air in a huge leap of what it looks like to Leap into Joy.

Check out her advice at her webpage:

www.evagrayzel.com/about/six-step-screening

Brighten up: Dental school faculty, students to provide care to 400 Cleveland elementary students

During last year's Give Kids a Smile Day, Michael Semidey, who was then a fourth-year student, showed proper brushing technique to a Scranton Elementary student. Photo by Susan Griffith.

Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine faculty and students will help brighten the smiles of nearly 400 Cleveland elementary school students Feb. 3, as part of the American Dental Association’s 10^thannual Give Kids a Smile Day.

The dental school has been selected as the official launch site for the 2012 Give Kids a Smile Day, during which volunteers will provide examinations, education and treatment to students from William Cullen Bryant, Clark and Scranton elementary schools and Carl & Louis Stokes Central Academy.

“Our ongoing commitment to this important event—as well as our other outreach programs—is indicative of the School of Dental Medicine’s dedication to improving the oral health of our community,” said Dean Jerold Golberg.

Others taking part in the Give Kids a Smile Day on campus are members and officers of the Ohio Dental Association and Greater Cleveland Dental Society and dentists from the Irving and Jeanne Tapper Pediatric Dental Center at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital and the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile of Northeastern Ohio.

Additionally, Provost W.A. “Bud” Baeslack III, School of Dental Medicine Dean Jerold Golberg, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio Department of Health Director Theodore Wymyslo, ODA President-elect Kim Gardner and City of Cleveland Director of Public Health Karen Butler will all speak at the event.

Dental care will begin in the two dental clinics at 8:45 a.m. and continue for about four hours. Children will receive dental exams, fluoride varnish, sealants and x-rays if necessary, and oral hygiene instruction. In addition, the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile will be set up outside the entrance to provide restorative care to about 20 children who have been pre-examined and diagnosed in need of care.

Give Kids a Smile is a national initiative of the American Dental Association in which dental professionals throughout the U.S. volunteer collectively on one designated day to provided much-needed oral health care and education; now, the program has grown to a multiple-day event in Ohio, sponsored by the Ohio Dental Association. Throughout the year, more than 1,800 dentists and other volunteers from around Ohio will provide free services to almost 17,000 children.

The estimated value of free services for the 2012 Give Kids a Smile Day in Ohio is $926,500; in the first nine years, Ohio dental volunteers provided more than $8.2 million in free dental services to more than 168,000 Ohio children.

For more information on Give Kids a Smile Day, visit www.oda.org.

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The dental school leadership team is creating a unique curriculum that is both innovative and patient-centered. Students will follow a case-based, small group, Problem-Based Learning (PBL) curriculum while studying alongside osteopathic medical students.

As with the College of Medicine and School of Pharmacy, the mission of the LECOM School of Dental Medicine is to prepare students to become dentists through programs of excellence in education, research, clinical care, and community service to enhance the quality of life through improved health for all humanity.

With our commitment to quality education at an affordable cost, LECOM is determined to prepare dentists who can deliver the best health care to underserved areas. Our hope is to work with the Bradenton community to provide care to residents who face challenges in obtaining needed dental care by serving them at our educational patient clinic in Bradenton. Our senior year outreach education course will reach more people by locating students at community dental clinics in other Florida communities, as well as in Erie.

The LECOM School of Dental Medicine will build a footbridge between the present and the future of dentistry throughout Southwest Florida and other parts of the country.

The clinical phase of the new dental students education will not begin immediately, but in the near future, the new dental clinic will be accepting new patients.

This snack is easy to prepare and will certainly bring a smile to your child's face!

Recipe Ingredients:
 

• smooth peanut butter
• 1 red apple, cored and sliced into eighths
•  squeeze of lemon juice
•  miniature marshmallows

 Directions
Spread peanut butter on one side of each apple slice (squeeze a little lemon juice over the apple if not serving immediately).

Place four miniature marshmallows on one apple slice and then lay another apple slice, peanut butter side down, on top.

There are a lot of other good eats, recipes,and books at Anabel Karmel's website.

Also an iPhone app: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/annabels-essential-guide-to/id409157308?mt=8

During the same time period, if elementary teacher salaries had inflated at the rate of university tuitions they would earn $200,000.00 a year!

Easy tuition loans are probably the main cause.  And if new graduates cannot get jobs, repayment of education debt becomes not only onerous, but impossible.

William R. Cast, MD, the current Chair of the Indiana University Board of Trustees was a classmate in our pre-professional training at Indiana University.  And we were staff members of the US Army Hospital at Fort Jackson during the Vietnam War; he in EENT and myself, the hospital Oral Surgeon.

Bill has since lived and practiced in Fort Wayne , Indiana.  He has founded a hospital, headed a medical software company, manages a fily agricultural complex and become a Sagamore of the Wabash, the highest recognition for an Indiana citizen--in my personal acquaintance, he is the closest exemplar of a Renaissance Man that I have met.

I took the occasion to share my concerns with him:

Dear Bill,

After my mother’s recent passing, alev ha-sholem, I was going through her papers and found an interesting bit of ephemera that I think you will enjoy.

I had sent her the enclosed letter from the IU Dental School, listing the requirements for my initial matriculation.  I am sure you received a similar letter from the IU Medical School at the same time.

Although I had marked up the mimeographed page with notes and calculations for monthly amortization payments, a careful reading discloses that my first year of dental school required that I pay a total tuition of $ 430.00.

The intervening years had clouded my memory of the cost of my tuition, but when I was reminded by seeing this remnant from the past, I just couldn’t let it go.

I went to the IU School of Dentistry’s website and ascertained that the current annual tuition for in-State students is sixty times as much.

In comparison, I do remember that that in 1958 a newly graduated elementary school teacher’s salary, in Indiana was about $3200.00 a year.  Had teacher’s salaries enjoyed the same rate of inflation as IU tuition it would infer a present-day teacher’s annual salary of around $180,000.00, which is counter-factual.

Now, I am not bringing this to your attention because I am suggesting that you do anything about this.  Tuition inflation is a national phenomenon, not just an Indiana problem.  Indeed, absent the recession, graduates who could obtain jobs would just obligingly pay off their education debt.  However, when there is no job to be had after graduation, it must seem like a breach of the Social Contract.

I guess that Sallie Mae’s open handed educational loan policy added so much liquidity to the Education Sector, that schools just enjoyed the boom.  Easy money meant never having to say no to any new project.  And I am sure your experience inside the University has afforded you a deeper insight into the matter.

Tuition inflation is a national economic aberration and will require a National solution.  I just wanted to share this with you as your trusteeship might give you access for beginning to address the solution.

Warmest Regards,

Tom Russell

However, to receive treatment that is optimally supportive a prospective patient  must find their Best Match in a Doctor.

Trying to decide whom to ask for help without an informed referral is like putting on a blindfold.

That’s why, at Yellow Springs Dental Care, we have always invested our attention when our dental patients request referral for specialty medical and dental care.

The Face is more than just a frame for the beautiful smiles that Dr. Russell creates for our patients.  So we are avid to help our patients when they decide that it’s time to improve their appearance.

• ·         fine lines, wrinkles and creases
• ·         vertical lines between brows
• ·         age/brown spots
• ·         hyperpigmentation lesions
• ·         smile lines
• ·         large facial pores
• ·         rough skin texture
• ·         acne
• ·         dry skin
• ·         sun-damaged skin
• ·         crow's feet
• ·         droopy eyelids and brows
• ·         rosacea
• ·         excessive, unwanted hair
• ·         broken blood vessels
• ·         scar treatment
• ·         loose jowls and neck skin
• ·         melasma
• ·         medical weight loss
• ·         skin tightening
• ·         unwanted, excessive hair
• ·         body contour treatments
• ·         birthmark
• ·         cellulite
• ·         stretch marks & scars
• ·         neck
• ·         hands
• ·         laser skin resurfacing
• ·         decollete treatments
• ·         saddle bags and tummies
• ·         rosacea
• ·         brown and red spots
• ·         dry skin
• ·         large pores
• ·         dull skin
• ·         unwanted hair
• ·         port wine stain
• ·         acne scaring
• ·         acne
• ·         sun damage
• ·         texture
• ·         sagging skin
• ·         cellulite
• ·         creapey skin
• ·          

In recent years we referred our friends to Anne Therese Aesthetics in, Columbus, for her expert attention to correct conditions that compromise their best appearance.

Dr. Anne Therese is expert at every modern mode of enhancing her patients’ appearance.

• ·         Blu-U facial
• ·         dermaplane
• ·         filler (Juvaderm, Restylane, Perlane) (
• ·         Fraxel
• ·         microlaser peel
• ·         photodynamic therapy
• ·         silk peel
• ·         Thermage wrinkle relaxers (Dysport, botox)
• ·         Vi Peel
• ·         laser hair removal
• ·         wrinkle relaxers (Dysport, Botox)

Dr. Anne Therese has an unusual background for a physician who specializes in aesthetrics; she specialized in Emergency Medicine for over ten years.  Accordingly, her beautiful office is one of the safest environments you can be in, because of Dr Anne Therese’s previous experience of caring for every exigency that hospital ER patients could present.

When bad things happen to your appearance or the evidence of the years accumulates we can whole-heartedly point you in the direction of Dr. Anne Therese Stubbs.  Thank You, Dr. Anne Therese for the dedicated, sensitive application of your superb skills in support of our patients; clinically and emotionally.

Anne Therese Aesthetic Medicine

Anne Therese Stubbs, M.D
438 Beecher Road
Gahanna, OH 43230

Phone:  614-855-4411 

• American Academy of Aesthetic Medicine
• The American Academy of Cosmetic
• American Society of Laser Medicine and Surgery
• Board certified in Emergency Medicine and a
• Fellow in the American College of Emergency Physicians 

drugs, the services provided by adult day health care centers and the services provided by intermediate care facilities.

But this will certainly adversely affect the emergency Medicaid dental care of illegal aliens.

Because immigrants are so often uninsured, out-of-pocket health care costs are higher than those paid by the insured, making immigrants less able to pay for the care they need. Other factors, like language barriers, also impair immigrants' access to and the quality of medical care they receive. The net result is that immigrants are much less likely to use primary and preventive medical services, hospital services, emergency medical services, and dental care than are citizens, even after controlling for the effects of race/ethnicity, income, insurance status, and health status.

Elderly immigrants, though often ineligible for Medicare because they did not work in the United States for a sufficient number of years to qualify for it or Social Security, may still be eligible for Medicaid if they are poor enough and meet other criteria.

Immigrants, both legal and unauthorized, often rely on a patchwork system of safety-net clinics and hospitals for free or reduced-price medical care, including state- and county-owned facilities, as well as charitable and religiously affiliated facilities.

The "Occupy" movement has recently been activated in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and while demonstrating in front of Yellow Springs Fifth Third Bank urges depositors to patronize the Yellow Springs Federal Credit Union.

The Occupy Yellow Springs folks are protesting the lack of fairness in the US financial system.  There was no attempt to disrupt entry to the Yellow Springs Fifth Third Bank and no law enforcement intervention was required to perserve public safety.

Recently the Public Broadcasting System aired this report on dental treatment in remote areas of Alaska performed by high school graduates with 18 - 24 months of on the job training in dentistry.

Treatments are remotely authorized by licensed dentists but there is not daily direct on-site supervision.  Be warned that this video shows an incident of oral surgery performed by one of the therapists.

Lamentably, these are third-world circumstances and Mid-Level Dental Therapists are a third-world solution, which the Federal Government permits in Alaskan  tribal areas.

However, now, the The Kellogg Foundation is using its sugar-frosted profits to fund committees in the lower 48 states to expand this concept to over 4000 US communities, nationwide.

 Sterling K. Speirn, president and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation:

"It is time now for more states and tribal nations to seriously consider new and proven

approaches – such as the dental therapist model – as a way to bring critically needed oral health care services to vulnerable children and families”

Accordingly, the Kellogg Foundation has established a coalition of Community Organizers in the following states:

• Kansas-Kansas Action for Children
• New Mexico-Health Action New Mexico
• Ohio-Universal Health Care Action Network
• Vermont-Voices for Vermont’s Children
• Washington-Children's Alliance

The American Dental Association (ADA) has long enjoyed a working relationship with the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in producing a number of programs. The ADA is partners with Kellogg to offer the ADA/Kellogg Executive Management Program.

The program is a "mini-MBA" program designed for dentists who want to learn more about management from the nation’s top-rated management school. This is not a practice management course. The curriculum draws from the core content areas for Kellogg MBA students, including: business strategy, organizational leadership, marketing, finance, accounting, economics, quantitative methods, and information systems.

Kellogg Foundation has a long history of assisting community organizers to focus Consumer and Community Participation in shaping of the US health system to ensure quality, affordable health care for all.

Past graduates of the Kellogg School contribute in organized dentistry at every level throughout the United States.  Their interests are often vectored toward management, insurance or dental organization service rather than clinical practice.  In the instance of advocating mid-level therapy, Kellogg's relationship has generally co-opted the ADA organization, at the expense of traditionally excellent US Standards of Dental Care.

Expanded Duty Dental  Assistantshave been successfully increasing dentists productivity while protecting patient outcomes with direct supervision of licensed dentists.

Promoting un supervised dental therapists, with limited training, will result in limited dental-first-aid patient care.

Kellogg's corporate conscience is alligned with The Kellogg Foundation to help mitigate the damage inflicted by their super-sweet cereal ingredients. (Kellogg Cereals Pushing Sugar)

Extending Airline Service to under-served destination cities might be achieved by giving Flight Attendants Crash Courses in How to Fly, but unsupervised Mid Level Dental Therapists, in the continental US, are a bad idea-no matter what sweeteners The W.H.Kellogg Foundation might add for the ADA.