This dentist uses laughing gas and regular unleaded — performing root canals out of the back of a van or RV.
On the first and third Mondays of every month, employees at Santa Clara, Calif.–based tech company Nvidia see a familiar site: a massive white van pulling into their parking lot. But rather than carrying office supplies or snacks, it’s full of periodontal probes, dental drills and tongue retractors. “It’s just like a regular dentist, but in an RV,” says Hector Marinez, an employee in the firm’s communications department who uses the service. “You go in between meetings and get what you need done.” And, yes, that may include a root canal.
Nvidia is one of a number of companies that offer their employees access to so-called dental vans, RVs and trucks — essentially dentists’ offices on wheels that pull up on or near company headquarters to offer employees everything from cleanings to basic root canals. Employees at tech companies like Genentech, Nvidia, Jupiter Networks and Yahoo YHOO +0.06% get this service through a relationship with Onsite Health, a company that offers traveling dental and health RVs to corporations and the military. (Don’t care for the on-wheels experience? The company can set up a makeshift dental practice in your office conference room or an empty office instead.) Employees at Las Vegas casinos like the MGM Grand, Luxor and Paris get visited by an Access Health Dental mobile dental office several times a month. And soon, employees at Google and Dropbox may be getting in on the dental action: Mobile dental company Studio Dental says it will launch its van in January and has talked to Google GOOG -0.20% and Dropbox about helping them get the word out to employees.
From the outside, the only indication that these vans, RVs and trucks are, in fact, mobile dental offices are the logos emblazoned on the vehicles. But on the inside they have many of the same qualities as a traditional dentist’s office, albeit in a tighter space. Onsite Health’s 520-square-foot vehicles have waiting rooms with televisions and several treatment rooms with all the traditional trappings — electric dental chairs, a lab with sterilizing equipment and sinks; Access Health Dental’s 700-square-foot facilities have five treatment rooms equipped with digital X-rays. The smaller Studio Dental van has 230 square feet of interior space, which includes a sterilization room, waiting area and two treatment rooms, all with luxe touches like 11-plus-foot ceilings, Corian-sculpted skylights and white oak walls.
Despite the fact that they’re small and on wheels, dental RVs offer nearly identical services to what you’d get in a brick-and-mortar office, minus some complicated specialty procedures. For example, the Onsite Health van servicing Silicon Valley is staffed by a local dentist, hygienist, dental assistant and front-desk person and offers cleanings and deep cleanings, fillings, bridges and crowns, implants and root canals (though, for complicated procedures they will refer you to a specialist, says company president Ern Blackwelder). They also offer cosmetic veneers and whitening (just don’t expect your employer’s insurance policy to fork over for those in most cases). The dental van companies also typically offer the ability to book appointments online, and they take insurance.
To be sure, dental vans aren’t going to replace traditional dental offices, as many people are wary of a dentist who works out of an office on wheels. Plus, many mobile dental companies have a brick-and-mortar store as well: Access Health Dental, for instance, has four offices in Las Vegas in addition to its mobile dental trucks. Furthermore, the concept isn’t new: For decades, mobile dental vans have long served low-income and in-need communities around the nation: The New York University College of Dentistry has a mobile dental van that travels around the city servicing public schools, community centers and local health fairs.Still, the idea is slowly gaining traction among companies: Blackwelder says that Onsite Health is adding several new corporate clients each year and now offers its services in California, Utah, Georgia, the Carolinas, Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas. And a spokesman for Access Dental Health says it has added 10 new casinos to its client roster in the past 18 months. One reason is that these vans, RVs and trucks can be a good way to get employees to go see the dentist regularly (no more commuting to and from the doctor’s office). A spokeswoman for Genentech, which uses Onsite Health’s mobile dental RV, says that “many employees take advantage of the service each month,” and Nvidia’s Marinez points out that until he started going to the dental van, he went to the dentist a lot less because it “used to require some mental gymnastics” to find time to do it. And in fact, that’s one of the inspirations behind Studio Dental, says co-founder Lowell Caulder: “When I was an investment banker, we had great dental benefits but a lot of people didn’t use them,” he explains, citing that with long work hours it can be hard to get to the dentist. “We make it easy to see the dentist.”
