ECU dental school OK'd

UNC plan would also ease shortage

East Carolina University will get its dental school, and UNC-Chapel Hill will expand its existing one -- changes that could make it easier for North Carolinians to get molars capped and cavities filled.

Leaders of the 16-campus University of North Carolina system gave the go-ahead to both projects Friday with a unanimous vote. Over time, the UNC Board of Governors hopes, the two efforts will help ease the state's chronic shortage of dentists.

"It's the right step in the right direction," said Erskine Bowles, the UNC system president.

North Carolina has fewer dentists per capita than all but three states. The need is particularly acute in rural areas, where many residents are forced to drive hours for care, or do without. Even patients who live where there are dentists report problems getting appointments.

Tammy Bosch, who lives in Sanford, said at least seven practices turned her away since last fall, when she started looking for a dentist for her five children. Her family, which moved to North Carolina last fall, has private dental insurance.

"They didn't really care whether I had a dentist or not," said Bosch, who finally got her children in at Happy Tooth Family Dentistry, a relatively new practice in Sanford. She's all for increasing the supply of dentists, which would give established providers more competition.

ECU's proposed dental school, which would feature up to 10 clinics that would see patients in underserved areas, is primarily aimed at improving access to care. Despite that, many practicing dentists have been critical of the new school, which some fear will threaten UNC's nationally prominent program by competing for students, faculty and state funding. Both ECU and UNC-Chapel Hill will ask state lawmakers for millions to finance their projects.

ECU will ask the N.C. General Assembly for about $90 million to build the school at the university's Greenville campus and its network of "service learning" clinics. Experienced faculty dentists would supervise the clinics and they would be staffed by fourth-year dental students, who would complete their final year of training while getting a feel for rural practice, said Dr. Greg Chadwick, ECU's vice chancellor for oral health.

ECU, which plans to enroll 50 students per class, also would place special emphasis on recruiting students from rural parts of the state who may be inclined to practice in underserved areas after graduation. The Brody School of Medicine at ECU uses a similar recruiting model that has a good track record. About 28 percent of ECU's graduates practice in rural North Carolina, Chadwick said. That may not sound like much, he said, but it's about 50 percent better than the state's other public medical school -- UNC-Chapel Hill.

Chadwick thinks ECU's dental school, which under the most optimistic timeline would not admit students until 2010, will be able to replicate the success of the medical school.

"It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of collaboration," he said. "But I think it's going to be successful."

Dental society accedes

Dr. Rex Card, a Raleigh dentist and president of the N.C. Dental Society said his organization won't stand in ECU's way. The society, whose members account for more than 80 percent of the state's licensed dentists, did not have an official opinion on the ECU dental school. But a survey of its members found that half were against it; a quarter supported it and the rest were undecided.

"I believe our membership will accept it," Card said of the new dental program.

Card said the society will meet with lawmakers to deliver the message that dentists want and expect to see both schools adequately funded. The society is on the record in support of expanding the dental school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where most North Carolina dentists trained.

UNC-Chapel Hill's $125 million expansion calls for increasing enrollment at the School of Dentistry from 81 slots per class to 100. It also would replace a 1960s-era dental sciences building with a state-of-the-art teaching and research facility. Dr. John Williams, dean of the UNC dental school, said the university will ask lawmakers for about $96 million.

"This is a critical step for a dental school that has really been a national and international leader in research and education," he said.

Dr. Al Roseman, a Wilmington endodontist and member of the UNC Board of Governors, challenged UNC-Chapel Hill's dental school to do more to address the state's dental access issues. He suggested that school look at its own recruiting process to see what more can be done to enroll students interested in practicing in underserved areas.

"We need to look at the needs of the whole state, remembering that one of our main functions is public service," Roseman said.

(Staff writer Jane Stancill contributed to this report.)