Voices from the Field: Dr. Lauren Rush on Community-Based Dentistry

Giving back to the community is in Dr. Lauren Rush’s DNA.

From a young age, Rush, DDS, the chief dental officer at MyCare Health Center in Michigan, watched as her parents put action behind their words when it came to helping the underserved. Her mother was a teacher in the Detroit public school system for more than 30 years, and her father was an entrepreneur who mentored the youth and volunteered for service projects. They both drove home the importance helping those in need and giving others the opportunity to live a better life.

“It does no good to be blessed with talent and opportunities if I am not going to go back to try to help someone else,” Rush says. “I cannot truly be successful if my neighbors are suffering and in need.”

Her parents would bring her along to volunteer and serve their community. For Rush, giving back took the form of cleaning up highways, volunteering at shelters and food pantries, tutoring, mentoring, working at health fairs, and participating in school-based dental programs.

Now, Rush helps the community by working at MyCare Health Center, a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC). There, she has seen improvements from decreasing their no-show rate to increasing their bottom line. MyCare Health Center is a member of the CareQuest Institute’s Community Oral Health Transformation (COrHT) initiative.

Rush shares more about the organization’s work and her journey.

Why have you spent your career in the Federally Health Qualified Center setting?

It felt like it was what I was supposed to be doing. Dentistry for me has felt more like a calling and an honor rather than a job, and I was not drawn to the glamour of cosmetic dentistry or private practice. There are many ways to find fulfillment in dentistry, and other practice types help a lot of people in different ways, but for me, the FQHC setting has been my niche and my form of ministry. Ministry is about giving ourselves and our time, talents, and resources to help others. That sounds like FQHC dentistry to me. My entire career has been community- and need-based, and while it has its many difficulties and challenges, it also has its rewards.

Why is community-based dentistry so important?

Every day I encounter people who have had many rough seasons in life, who feel shame, who have been treated very poorly and neglected, who have given up and had very inconsistent health care in their lives. They need someone to tell them that they are in a safe space, that they are welcome and valued, not being judged, and we’re here to help them move forward with their dental care and quality of life regardless of what they have gone through or are currently experiencing.

Many people who have the greatest need in the community either do not know that they have options to receive dental care or have become very dejected or apathetic due to lapses in care and the barriers it takes for them to access that care. Community-based dentistry is important because it is our job to bridge the gaps in care and help reduce the barriers that people face in seeking treatment. There are many who think that dentistry is a luxury rather than a basic health care need, like going for an annual physical, gynecological, or eye exam. Dentistry is a need, and community-based clinics help bring the need to the communities who are at the greatest risk.

At MyCare Health Center, how do you manage to balance the need for financial success and the importance of prioritizing excellent patient care?

You’re most financially stable in a dental program when you can provide excellent care for patients. So, if I, the other providers, and our staff are providing patients with great customer service — with quality health care — then patients are going to continue to come back to us. If they continue to come back to us, then we will be able to remain financially stable.

And we, of course, must make decisions that will allow us to be sustainable from a business standpoint, but I think the one benefit that we have had is that the providers and staff we’ve hired have been mission-minded and mission-focused, and they are committed to treating our patients well and providing quality care.

We also do our best to hold patients accountable for their health care and educate them on how to become accountable for their oral health. That has directly impacted our financial stability. As we continue to refine those practices and keep in mind the goal of increasing our financial sustainability, we will continue to have that success.

How did your involvement in COrHT help to accelerate the efforts that MyCare is making?

COrHT really helped motivate us to be accountable to try to tackle some of our goals and some issues we face.

One of those goals that stands out is integration. That is something that, since I started at MyCare, we’ve discussed we wanted to find better ways to integrate across service lines. I don’t know that it really occurred to us to create a smaller team to start to look at integration, but I think that that being the trajectory we’ve set off on has really been helpful because it minimized the number of people involved initially so that we can really focus on what the goals are.

It encouraged and motivated me, the CMO [chief marketing officer], and our COO [chief operating officer] to sit down together and talk through some of these issues to try to troubleshoot before we bring in the larger team. And talking to some of the other dental directors and leadership from other health centers, they have had some successes in that regard. So, listening to what they’ve done and implementing that has been great.

I think the input and the stories from other health centers and other COrHT participants was welcomed in that camaraderie, knowing that we’re not the only ones facing some of these issues, that it’s not just us, and maybe it’s an issue we don’t have the ability to solve quickly, but we know that it’s on the radar because everybody has discussed it. So, we feel supported in those efforts, and we feel like there is a team of other like-minded individuals who are all working toward similar goals.

How important is your CEO support and collaboration?

[CEO] Karen’s [Wood] support — not just with this project, but in general of myself in leadership as well as with the dental service line — is invaluable. I’ve worked in a few different health centers, and I will say that Karen’s interest in dental is unmatched. A lot of times leadership does not understand dental, and so that causes them a little angst and they shy away from really diving in to understand what’s going on and to find the best ways to be creative to make sure that dental is successful.

And one thing that I feel is a true benefit to us and a great attribute of Karen’s is that if she does not understand something — let’s say I’m talking in dental language — she’ll ask for clarification. She doesn’t glaze over it. She listens to me as the chief dental officer whom she hired. So, she trusts me to do my job, and we communicate well. We also meet weekly. That’s something that I’ve never experienced before, and it’s extremely helpful.

Having a supportive CEO and the rest of the executive team has made a huge difference in the success of the dental program because we feel heard because we are heard, and we feel seen because we are seen. And Karen’s active interest in what we do has been the most refreshing part of my job. We work well as a team, and I think that that is felt by the rest of my team.

What advice would you give to other organizations that want to go on a similar journey?

Collaborate first with the people on your team. It’s great to collaborate with other organizations, but having a good working relationship and good communication with the people whom you work with on a daily basis is the first step in what will be your success in COrHT or just in growth in general as a service line. There are a lot of goals and a lot of things that you can write down, and that can be a little daunting, but take one step at a time.

A lot of times during this program, I felt like, “Okay, we’re not making enough progress.” But when we saw the things in black and white on the spreadsheet it really kind of put things into better perspective. We can be our own worst critic sometimes, and a lot of us in leadership have these grand expectations of ourselves. So, when you see those things, don’t be afraid to say, “Okay, we’re doing well.” Of course, we can always do more, but any progress is impactful.

For more about MyCare Health Center and its involvement in the COrHT initiative, watch this video.