Orange County's Piedmont Regional Dental Clinic offers low-cost dental work to people in need. But not everyone can just hop in their car and drive there. That's why there's a new effort to expand their reach into Greene County.
Green County Transit is considering offering service to the clinic.
This is a service that is much needed for Carolyn Lamb, a Medicaid recipient who hasn't been to the dentist for five years. She said going to the dentist is "something you put off until one day you wake up with a toothache and you say it's time to go."
But Lamb is not sure she can make it to the Piedmont clinic where they accept her healthcare plan. "If I have to drive and I don't know where I'm going, sometimes I get confused, or lost, or nervous," she said.
The problem is that it's hard to find enough people to make the service worth the while.
"We don't always deal with great quantities of people having a certain issue, so here in Greene we may get one or two people a month who have that need, which of course becomes a problem for transit just running out there," said James Howard, the director of Greene County's Department of Social Services.
Lamb just hopes the new transit system gets approved, so she can finally get her teeth cleaned.
"It's very important," she said. "If you don't get to go on regular basis due to finances, your teeth suffer. You might have had a worse case of something when you could have caught it early on."
People who are interested in seeing this service come to light are asked to contact Greene County Transit.
