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Manchester staff flag dental, hearing and vision access gaps; health services for people experiencing homelessness to continue under new provider arrangement
Summary
Public health staff described limited dental, hearing and vision access across age groups, outlined existing safety-net services (including a dental van and mobile street-medicine van) and said primary clinics serving people experiencing homelessness will transition administratively as hospital ownership changes.
Genna Thomas and other health department staff reported on barriers to dental, hearing and vision care, and on the department’s primary-care access points for people experiencing homelessness.
Thomas said the department operates a dental van and provides free dental treatment for about 600 children per year through the van and volunteer dentists. She described the van and mobile efforts as a safety net rather than a longitudinal dental home: "By no means is that a dental home; that's a Band Aid," Thomas said. Staff said many private dental providers do not accept Medicaid, and capacity at community dental clinics is limited.
Thomas also described constraints in hearing and vision access, noting programs that provide free glasses or vouchers are limited in scope and supply. A school-nurse voucher program the department has used was temporarily closed this year because demand exceeded available funding and vouchers.
On health services for people experiencing homelessness, Thomas said the department helped use federal funding to establish a clinic at Families in Transition roughly 40 years ago and later added two additional access points — a Wilson Street clinic that includes integrated behavioral health and a mobile street-medicine van called Weems. The department contracts with a hospital system (reported in the meeting as CMC) to provide clinicians; the transcript states that with the hospital’s privatization and transition to HCA, clinical administration for the health care for the homeless program will move to Catholic Charities while the service model and access points remain. "There are about 2,000 active patients through this mechanism who desperately need health care," Thomas said.
Staff identified HRSA as a funding and administrative partner for federally supported clinic operations and said they intend to preserve clinic access during the administrative transfer. They emphasized linkages are needed among primary care, behavioral health and dental services to meet patient needs.
No formal votes were associated with these updates.
