Shortline opens its third dental clinic
Tulsa-based Shortline Dental has opened its third office at 1671 E. 71st St., and is still seeking to “treat all patients, infants to dentures.”
The clinic, which features 10 examination rooms and a video arcade for younger patients, will have a six-person staff. Dentists Robert Baird and Celeste Riggs will perform a range of general dentistry services and minor surgeries.
Shortline Dental owner and Tulsa native Mike Riggs, also a dentist, said the clinic seeks to meet the dental needs of all residents of his hometown, including the poor and uninsured.
While Mike Riggs and dentist Jeffery Brorerman are assigned to the east Tulsa clinic, dentist Daniel A. Warlick is assigned to the north Tulsa operation.
“Our patients range from families living below the poverty line to those with large, expendable incomes,” Mike Riggs said. “Our goal is to give all Tulsans another option for affordable, high-quality oral health care in their communities.”
Shortline Dental opened its original east Tulsa clinic in 2006 at 21st Street and Mingo Road, and now has 15 employees. Two years later, a second clinic opened at Pine and Lewis avenues in north Tulsa, an area with a high percentage of SoonerCare patients, according to Riggs. It has 10 employees.
According to the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, about 20 percent of Tulsa County residents were enrolled in the SoonerCare program in 2008. The majority of SoonerCare enrollees are 18 and under.
“While dental care has sharply improved
for upper and middle classes from the past, the lower class has limited access to care,” Mike Riggs said in an e-mail. “We provide that access with children and adults.”
Like Shortline Dental’s east and north Tulsa locations, the new south Tulsa clinic will accept most insurance plans as well as SoonerCare. Credit plans for the uninsured also are available.
“No child chooses the family situation into which they are born,” Mike Riggs said. “We believe everyone deserves to have their oral health needs met, no matter where they live.”
Shortline recently signed a contract to provide no-cost dental education, supplies and screenings to six Title One elementary schools within the Union school district: Rosa Parks, Briar Glen, Boevers, Roy Clark, Grove and McAuliffe. Title One schools are those with 50 percent or more students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program.
“Education is very important in that a lot of times, people don’t realize they need regular checkups and aren’t preforming preventive home care as they should,” Mike Riggs said. ” We don’t differentiate between SoonerCare patients and cash patients. They’re all treated exactly the same, as we ourselves would like to be treated.”
Mike Riggs said he “cringes” at the “dental chain” title.
“A dental chain to me would seem impersonal and unexceptional,” he said. “We like to treat SoonerCare patients for a number of reasons. All our doctors went to Oklahoma University College of Dentistry (which is quite a good clinical school) and perform high quality work. We all came from the class of 2004 and 2007, so we know each other well; we can trust and rely on each others’ work.”
Hours at the new clinic are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 8 a.m. to noon Friday. For appointments, call 340-5020.
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