New Sacramento clinic will bring UOP dental and medical services under one roof
The University of the Pacific plans to build an innovative new medical education clinic on its Sacramento campus that leaders say will provide a glimpse into the future of where dental care — and indeed health care delivery overall — is headed.
“Our plan would include having not only dental students there in Sacramento but also our other health students -- the (physician assistants), the nursing students and our pharmacy students from the Long School of Pharmacy, as well as others providing primary care to the community right there on our Sacramento campus,” said Dr. Nader Nadershahi, a dentist and dean of the University of the Pacific’s Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, which is based in San Francisco.
Nadershahi said he knows of no other dental school in the nation that is teaching with an integrated model like this one but that he feels it is the next evolution in his field because of the importance of oral health to overall health.
“There’s about $2.5 billion spent in emergency room visit costs for oral health care conditions that could have been prevented if folks were able to go and see their oral health care provider for preventive care,” Nadershahi explained. “That’s a big burden on our healthcare system. ... On the flip side, there’s over 30 million people who go see their oral health care provider but may not go and see their medical provider during the year.”
Among thought leaders in the health care field, there has been a lot of discussion about integrating dentistry into patients’ medical home, Nadershahi said, and as an innovator in the field of dentistry over the last 125 years, the University of the Pacific felt it was time to create a model for how this new type of health education would be delivered to dental school students.
“If we’re able to catch something, whether it’s an oral cancer or high blood pressure or diabetes ... that we can then refer for care, that could really reduce the impact on that individual’s health burden and disease (progression),” Nadershahi said. “It could also really lower the cost of downstream more expensive treatments that those individuals may have to endure.”
University faculty will be able to research best practices for this collaborative health care model in a new building that Nadershahi hopes to start constructing next year across from McClatchy Park on Fifth Avenue in the Oak Park neighborhood. If all goes to plan, the clinic would open in 2024.
University leaders announced this week that they had received a $4 million lead gift from Stephen Thorne and his wife, Pamela Thorne, to help create the new teaching facility, known as the Pacific Dental Services Health Care Collaborative. It will offer comprehensive health care services to the public in an integrated teaching and learning environment.
“Pacific Dental Services cares about supporting dentists and creating a perfect patient experience, but we also strive to mentor and assist the next generation of health care professionals to become the leaders of tomorrow,” Stephen Thorne said. “This new center will serve as the future of oral health and is an example of the dental-medical integration that will provide better health care to the patients who will utilize this amazing new facility.”
The founder and chief executive officer of Pacific Dental Services, Thorne has been advocating for this collaborative model, Nadershahi said. It is something that the Indian Health Service and many medical clinics serving uninsured patients and Medi-Cal beneficiaries have been using for some time. Research is showing that this collaborative model has value for not only patients but also the medical care team, Nadershahi said.
The Thornes’ gift launches fundraising efforts for Pacific’s Oak Park collaborative, and Nadershahi said he expects the facility will cost at least $50 million to construct.
UOP dentistry know-how closer to home
Sacramento-area residents have long traveled to the Bay Area to get lower-cost dental care from students and faculty at the University of the Pacific’s clinics, but once this facility opens, it will allow thousands to get care closer to home.
“We’re estimating somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 ... overall health care patients, and maybe 10,000 of those will be dental-specific patients that we would treat,” Nadershahi said. “To give you a comparison, in our clinic in San Francisco, we have about 120,000 patient visits, everywhere from pediatric all the way to our aging community and from all walks of life.”
The new clinic will allow Pacific to add positions for about 30 students at its dental school, he said. In addition to dental, physician assistant, nursing and pharmacy students, Nadershahi said, there will also be learning opportunities for its students in occupational therapy, nutrition, social work and other health care fields.
“This facility will allow Pacific to lead the way toward a future that will require deeper collaboration between dental and medical care providers,” said Nicoleta Bugnariu, the dean of Pacific’s new School of Health Sciences. “We are looking forward to strengthening our connection with the Dugoni School of Dentistry, and our students are particularly excited to be part of this new collaborative educational model.”
This collaboration should allow Pacific’s researchers, and those from other institutions, to measure outcomes not only in terms of value but also with the other three aims,” Nadershahi said.
“Health expenditures throughout the US are one of the highest around the world,” he said “and arguably our outcomes and our ability to reach diverse communities and historically underserved members of our community hasn’t been as strong as it could be. And we’re looking to try to use these educational models to start addressing some of those needs.”
This story was originally published June 24, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
