Ground broken in Nixa for new Children’s Smile Center clinic

Children’s Smile Center is getting a new dental clinic to replace its Ozark headquarters.

A March 28 groundbreaking at the clinic site, 112 S. Ridgecrest Ave. in Nixa, celebrated the start of construction, which is expected to increase the number of low-income children served. The patients served with restorative and preventive care are children on Missouri Medicaid.

The project is expected to be completed by the end of this year, according to officials.

“It’s a pretty big move for us,” said Jackie Barger, executive director of Children’s Smile Center. “Once we get it fully staffed, it has the potential to increase our number of patients served annually by 30%-40%.”

Based on the current patient count, that increase equates to 10,000 patients served each year.

Barger said at 7,356 square feet and with nine dental exam rooms, the new facility will be more than double the size of the current one, and that will help it take care of both patients and staff better. It will also include a large community room for public use. Barger declined to disclose the cost of the new facility.

The Ozark building that is slated to be replaced was the original home of Children’s Smile Center at its inception in 2006, Barger said. At that time, dentists local to Stone and Christian counties got together with nonprofit leaders to discuss the need for dental care for low-income families. At the time, the only option was the federally qualified health center in Springfield, Jordan Valley Community Health Center, Barger said, and the wait times were up to a year.

“That was the only option, because private practice dentists weren’t accepting Medicaid,” Barger said.

Initially, Barger said, the center had to rely on community support to make up the difference between what Medicaid paid at the time and the actual cost of services. Medicaid rates were adjusted in 2021, he said, allowing Children’s Smile Center to afford its capital investment.

Today, the nonprofit serves patients in Barry, Christian, Dade, Lawrence, Stone and Taney counties. Satellite locations of Children’s Smile Center are located in Aurora and Branson West.

Barger said Children’s Smile Center now operates a $4 million budget with eight dentists – two of them full-time – and 32 staff members, and it serves over 7,000 patients. But Barger estimates there are 25,000 potential patients in the six-county area, particularly with a precipitous rise in both population and poverty numbers.

Barger said the center sees about 30 kids a day, but sometimes it sees as many as 300 kids in a single week.

Barger said Children’s Smile Center contracts with Witherspoon Surgery Center in Springfield to provide dental services requiring anesthesia. For kids who are 3-4 years old and have extensive needs, or for those with medical diagnoses that complicates care, that allows all the work to be done at once, instead of in five or six appointments. That’s about 15% of the dental work Children’s Smile Center provides in a given year, Barger said.

He noted that Medicaid does not typically pay for orthodontia – only in cases when it’s medically necessary, he said – but the center works with several orthodontists who he said do a good job of exploring ways to pay or even helping families locate grants, like one offered through the Community Foundation of the Ozarks for orthodontic care.

Barger said he strives to make sure that patients have an experience that’s as good as or better than what they would experience in a private dental practice.

“There’s still a perception that because we’re a nonprofit or because we serve a low-income clientele with Medicaid that somehow those services are lesser,” he said. “I feel very strongly that is not the case.”

Barger said the organization is careful to hire dentists who believe in the center’s philosophy of care, which is doing the best for each child that uses its services.

“I like to go in the lobby, and if I see a parent sitting with a child there, I want to tell them thanks for coming,” he said. “I think it’s important. How people are treated is the most important indicator of feelings of success and liking going to a dental office.”

Children’s Smile Center also visits most schools in its service area to have hygienists look into every child’s mouth and provide general dental education and give each child a gift bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste and floss.

“Dental decay is still the No. 1 unmet health care need for Missouri school children, and we step in the gap and try to make sure people know how important it is,” he said.

The Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services issued a study of oral health care in 2020 that said 6% of 83,000 Missouri children have fair or poor oral health, with 14.6% of children ages 1-17 having one or more oral health problems. More than a quarter of children under the age of 18 did not see a dentist in the past year. Further, an estimated 25%-40% of cavities could have been prevented through twice-yearly fluoride treatments by a dentist, the report found.

According to past Springfield Business Journal reporting, the general contractor for the project is Snyder Construction Group LLC. The building is designed by Arkifex Studios LLC, with engineering by Shaffer & Hines Inc., civil; RTM Engineering Consultants LLC, structural; and Conway Duncan Inc., mechanical, electrical and plumbing.

Barger said building costs are being funded through the organization’s Healthy Smiles capital campaign, which will run through the end of 2029.