Dental Care
Nonprofit Geriatric Dental Group offers low-cost dental care and interest-free payment plans for people 55 years and older.
Where: 16500 S.E. 15th St., Suite 150, Vancouver.
Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Contact: 360-326-3829.
Larry Greene first visited a Geriatric Dental Group office 10 years ago in Federal Way. He was on Medicare and didn’t have dental insurance, and the clinic offered low-cost dental care.
A few years later, he moved to Tigard, Ore. and started going to the nonprofit’s flagship clinic in Portland. He’s continued to drive to the dental office on Powell Boulevard for the last three years while living in Vancouver.
Now, though, Greene, 78, will have a much shorter commute. Geriatric Dental Group has opened a new clinic at Columbia Tech Center, not far from Greene’s east Vancouver home.
Dental Care
Nonprofit Geriatric Dental Group offers low-cost dental care and interest-free payment plans for people 55 years and older.
Where: 16500 S.E. 15th St., Suite 150, Vancouver.
Hours: 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Contact: 360-326-3829.
“It’s going to be really cool,” Greene said.
“It’s going to be a great advantage for seniors who don’t have dental insurance,” he added.
About 700 to 800 people living in Southwest Washington are current patients at the nonprofit’s Portland clinic, which opened in 1974, said Amy Linder, the group’s executive director.
“The Portland clinic was booked out for six months at one point,” she said. “So we thought (a Vancouver clinic) would alleviate some of that.”
Geriatric Dental Group opened the doors to its new Vancouver office earlier this week. The clinic provides low-cost dental care to people 55 and older and anyone who requires a wheelchair-accessible dental office. There are no income requirements.
The nonprofit relies on grants to get the doors open — the Washington Dental Service Foundation contributed $90,000 toward the local office — and fees for services to cover operations.
The local clinic features six operatories and, when fully staffed, will have two dentists and two hygienists. The clinic offers comprehensive dental services — cleanings, fillings, extractions, dentures, some root canals and crown and bridge work — at prices 20 to 50 percent lower than at most dental offices, Linder said. If a patient needs to be referred to an oral surgeon for additional work, the clinic has agreements with local providers to offer services at lower costs, she said.
At Geriatric Dental, a new patient exam costs $35, full-mouth X-rays are $50 and cleanings are $60. Fillings cost $85 to $125, and porcelain crowns are about $600, compared with $900 or more at other dental offices, Linder said.
Before Greene found Geriatric Dental, he was paying $120 to get his teeth cleaned. Without dental insurance, he and his wife have to pay for all of their dental care out of pocket.
“It saves me hundreds of dollars a year,” Greene said.
The dental clinic also offers no-interest payment plans, Linder said.
“Our clientele is very good about making payments,” Linder said, even if they can only pay $10 per month.
Too often, Linder said, seniors on fixed incomes are forced to choose between buying a prescription or going to the dentist. The goal at Geriatric Dental is to make dental care affordable, not just for emergencies but for maintenance, as well, she said.
A survey conducted by the Washington Dental Service Foundation found that one in five adults age 55 and older has a dental need that requires treatment. But only half of seniors 65 to 74 years old — and just 36 percent of people 75 and older — have dental insurance, according to the survey.
“There definitely is a need out there for affordable dental care for seniors,” Linder said.
