Mobile Dentist

IHT: Samantha Taube stepped out of the MGM Grand hotel and casino into the bright sun to walk to the parking lot. After a short distance, she approached a trailer, entered, sat in a dentist’s chair and had her teeth cleaned.
“If you know Las Vegas traffic these days, you know what a benefit this is,” said Taube, who trains employees in the huge casino’s slot machine operations. After 20 minutes, she was back at work.
Down on the Strip, Beverly Egan, a poker dealer at the Stardust Resort and Casino, sat in air-conditioned comfort, in another mobile dental office decorated in pale blue amid menacing power drills and X-ray equipment. Egan had popped in to have X- rays taken before scheduled dental work. She, too, appreciated the convenience.
“I’d have to take three hours at least if I had to drive to an office,” she said. This visit took only 30 minutes.
The mobile units are owned by On- Site Dental NV, a Las Vegas company founded seven years ago by Chris Davenport, who is not a dentist, but an entrepreneur. His company’s basic service combines technology, mobility and the American reverence for saving time.
On-Site Dental owns two trailers, each fitted with two dental offices in which dentists and hygienists see about 1,000 patients every Monday through Saturday in the parking lots of 11 casinos in Las Vegas. Most of the patients are employees covered by the casinos’ dental insurance plans, which pay up to 80 percent of the costs of most dentistry.
Mobile dentistry: Filling new needs in the U.S. [IHT]