Dr. Lowell E Einerson, DDS

West Central Dental Resources, Inc., dba Caring Hands Dental Clinic, began as a vision several years ago by a group of caring local citizens. Those visionaries included, Dr Lowell Einerson DDS, Dr Robert Mohs DDS, Dr William Heegaard MD, Dr Timothy Gehring DDS, Jennifer Kuznia, Sister Patrice Kiefer, Ruth Nagle and others. These folks realized an urgent need to provide dental care and education to those underserved citizens on Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare programs. Due the extremely low reimbursements from the State for any dental work provided these citizens, private dental offices would loose money seeing them, thus the access to care, including children, was very limited at best. Also at issue were the dental emergencies that would have to go to the hospital emergency room for dental care, even though the hospital does not provide dental services.
This group met over the years and finally obtained funding from the Douglas County Hospital’s Auxiliary to allow an emergency …dental program to begin. With this funding dental emergencies were referred to area dentists for treatment and the offices were paid a stipend for their services, if desired. Finally the dental problems were being fixed. This program took some of the pressure off of the hospital’s emergency room, but still the area was lacking a clinic to provide preventative dental care and education. Without preventative care and education available, there would be no slowdown in emergencies.
In 2006 the Board obtained additional funding and opened the doors of the Caring Hands Dental Clinic. It first began in borrowed space in a local chiropractor’s office. Not long after that the big push began, and the Clinic established its home in the Marion Building, located at 700 Cedar Street in Alexandria. To this day the Clinic resides in room #44.
The Clinic has gone through enormous growth and changes since seeing the first patients in room #44 in December of 2006. Through generous donations and grants, along with the tremendous volunteer base the Clinic has, the Clinic has grown to providing 1413 dental appointments in 2009, as well as 143 dental emergencies handled. Please see the 2009 annual report on this website.