About
West Central Dental Resources, Inc., dba Caring Hands Dental Clinic, began as a vision over a decade 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, Mary Lou Olsen 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 to the extremely low reimbursements from the State for any dental work provided to 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, where only temporary pharmaceutical relief was available.
The clinic is recognized as a 501c3 Non-Profit, a Minnesota Critical Access Dental Provider and a National Health Service Corp site. We were nominated for the Minnesota Rural Health Team Award in both 2013 and 2016 and were awarded with it in 2018. We've also been awarded the 2013 Minnesota Department of Human Services, Commissioner's Circle of Excellence Award for the outstanding, high quality dental care and education provided by the Clinic's outstanding staff.
