The Cowlitz Family Health Center’s new mobile medical center is taking dental care to patients in Cowlitz, Wahkiakum and Pacific counties who otherwise struggle to access it, with plans to soon add medical services.
The mobile medical center, which is contained inside an RV, currently offers dental care at Family Health Center locations that don’t have their own dental facilities. The Family Health Center hopes to expand the mobile center’s medical services and begin scheduling visits to homeless encampments in October, CEO Jim Coffee said.
“It’s one of the ways to keep people engaged in their health care,” he said.
According to the Family Health Center website, only the Longview and Woodland clinics currently offer dental care.
The Family Health Center is a nonprofit that offers medical, dental and behavioral health care mainly aimed at low-income patients, although its services are not restricted by income level. Some locations also offer Women, Infants and Children (WIC) services and support for women who are pregnant or have recently delivered a baby. It has 11 locations in Cowlitz County, one in Cathlamet and one in Ocean Park.
“Obviously, the greatest benefit and the most enjoyment that you get is being able to reach people you may not otherwise be able to get to,” said Dental Director David Meyers.
Who benefits?
Anyone can make appointments with the Family Health Center, which offers a sliding scale for fees based on income. For patients who have no means of paying a fee, it can also provide services without charge.
“In Pacific and Wahkiakum county, there really aren’t a lot of options for dental services for people who either don’t have dental insurance or are on Medicaid,” Coffee said.
According to DentistLink, a referral service run by the dental nonprofit Arcora Foundation, the closest dentist to Wahkiakum County that accepts Medicaid or people without insurance is in Longview, while the two options in Pacific County are located on the north side of the county, over an hour from Ocean Park.
Over the last few years, it’s become more difficult to get people to come in for treatment, especially if they have to travel a long way to reach a clinic, Coffee said. Offering transportation assistance and bringing more services to them with the mobile center is a way he hopes to reverse that trend.
Cathlamet has one dental clinic, Cathlamet Dental. If a resident was unable to get an appointment or didn’t have the right insurance, they would have to travel slightly over half an hour to Longview.
“Mobile medical centers don’t make money,” Coffee said. “It’s a service that, for the communities we serve, is really the right thing to do.”
How does it work?
The Family Health Center ordered the RV for the mobile center in 2021 for $530,000 using federal grant funding, including a small portion of a $4 million COVID-19 relief grant. Because of recent increases in the cost of supplies, the same RV would probably cost closer to $800,000 today, Coffee said.
The Family Health Center received the RV in May 2024 and began offering dental services May 22, but medical services have taken longer to set up because they require more supplies, such as vaccines, that have to be carefully stored to maintain their effectiveness, Coffee said.
The goal is to offer more medical services in October, as well as expand the number of locations the mobile center visits.
Patients can receive any of the same dental services in the mobile center as they can at the Family Health Center’s brick-and-mortar locations, except for crowns. Services offered include cleanings, extractions, fillings and even root canals.
The Family Health Center does not offer dentures at any of its locations, but will provide referrals to other providers and complete preparatory procedures.
For patients who can’t reach appointments on their own, the Family Health Center also has a patient transport bus operated by the same driver as the mobile center.
So far, the mobile center has been parking at Family Health Center locations such as the office in Ocean Park, where it is used to expand on those locations’ normal services. While parked, it can plug in to use the building’s electricity rather than relying on its own generators to power equipment.
“This is the newest, fanciest equipment we have,” Coffee said.
