Cavities Unlimited

There was nothing unusual in the fact that John W. Hay, 49, was "a dental coward" and neglected his teeth so long that for two months he had to spend two evenings a week and several hours each Saturday in the chair. What was unusual was that his dentist, knowing that Hay was president of Los Angeles' American Hospital Management Corp., prodded him into doing something about it. Said the dentist: "Why don't you get us a dental hospital in Los Angeles? Then a whole job like this could be done in two hours, and we'd both live longer."

Last week the Southern California Dental Hospital stood as a glittering, $1,750,000 glass-and-marble monument to Hay's initiative. On Sunset Boulevard, hard by Los Angeles' "hospital row," it is the nation's (perhaps the world's) first hospital built exclusively for dentistry. And it was as empty as a freshly prepared dental cavity. Hay's planning had foreseen everything--except how to get patients in. Dental cowardice is a common ailment.

Pushbutton Draperies. Local leaders in dentistry had assured Hay that such a hospital was not only desirable but necessary. An estimated 9,000 patients annually need admission to Los Angeles' general hospitals for dentistry, though only 5,000 actually go in. With the city's population zooming, general-hospital beds are getting scarcer. Besides, most of its general hospitals dislike the cavity trade, and dentists are low men on the medical totem pole, with no admission priviliges. Patients who need hospitalization for major dentistry are listed as: the bedridden, the mentally retarded, many psychiatric patients, business and professional men who want to save time by having a lot of work done at once, and any patients needing general anesthesia.

The Dental Hospital has 16 individual "operatories," ten general, and six specially equipped for more difficult surgery. There are dozens of the latest high-speed drills (up to 300,000 r.p.m.), a $40,000 anesthesia setup; such safeguards as visible-image electrocardioscopes, audible heart-tone monitors, pacemakers, defrbrillators and resuscitation gear. Besides specialized laboratories, diet kitchens and sterilization rooms, there are 30 recovery rooms for outpatients. Rooms for inpatients have pushbutton control of draperies and TV sets, plus individual patios. The rates ($50 a day semiprivate, $60 private) are only about half what they would be in general hospitals since they include all drugs, care and X rays.

Double Degrees. In October (its first month), the hospital had twelve patients (only five inpatients), got up to 21 in November, then slumped to three a week this month. Clinical Director Robert J. Birnkrant, who is both an M.D. and a D.D.S., notes that operating costs run to $43,000 a month. Unless dental cowards--and professionally conservative dentists--fill some of the hospital's cavities soon, the pioneering venture will have to be abandoned. Only the stockholders cannot lose: the building would make a quick hit as a specialized medical hospital, e.g., for ear-nose-throat cases.

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