Meeting the need for dental care
Doctors Janie and Ryan Busk (first picture) own Cashmere Family Dentistry. Since 2015, Dr. Ryan has worked with Upper Valley MEND to help provide dental care for patients who need it but may have trouble affording the costs of treatment.
When Ryan and Janie Busk first became dentists almost two decades ago, they worked in public health in the Okanogan Valley, providing dental care to people on Medicaid and Medicare. Although the couple now owns Cashmere Family Dentistry (CFD) and they now see a much broader range of people, their focus hasn’t changed.
“Our mission is to manifest a legacy of oral health in our community,” says Dr. Ryan. “That doesn’t mean just the people who can pay.”
To help fulfill that mission, Dr. Ryan has been helping in some capacity at the Upper Valley Free Clinic since 2015, first as a referral partner and then as a volunteer.
Dr. Ryan volunteered at the Free Clinic one Monday a month for many years. Sometimes, all the patient needed was some coaching on their dental hygiene. Many times, however, Dr. Ryan was diagnosing an issue that he couldn’t help with in the moment. Often, the patient needed an extraction, which required specialized equipment typically only found in a dental office.
“Unfortunately, a lot of times we couldn’t do anything for them that night,” he said. “They would still go home with pain.”
When dental care is more than just cosmetic
Terri Weiss, a nurse practitioner who ran the Free Clinic from 2017 to 2022, can recall several occasions where dental patient needs were so severe it threatened their lives, including one man with many health problems. He had diabetes, but he could never get his blood sugar to stabilize because of a chronic mouth infection. Another one had a compromised immune system—without the dental care he got from Dr. Busk, Terri says, he would have died.
“{Ryan} shared with me how much he gets out of volunteering because the need is so great,” said Terri. “Without Ryan, we would never have been able to provide the care we did.”
Eventually, Terri worked out a new system that didn’t require Dr. Ryan’s presence on Monday nights—a process that is still used today. Dr. Karl Kranz—who took Terri’s position as director when she retired from the role—and the other volunteer doctors at the Free Clinic examine patients with dental complaints to determine if there is a need to see Dr. Ryan and his team. If there is, they connect the patient with Liz Hurtado, Upper Valley MEND’s social worker. Liz helps arrange an appointment for the patient at CFD to diagnose the issue and make a plan. Depending on the patient’s situation, MEND has a small amount of funding that may be able to help pay for some dental work—generally, things like extractions or fillings.
Like MEND’s other financial assistance offerings, dental care assistance is available for people who live within the Cascade School District or Cashmere; patients are eligible for help once every six months. Any patient referred by MEND gets a discount on services at CFD—whether they go once or decide to continue going to Dr. Ryan and his team for regular dental care on their own.
Dr. Ryan doesn’t want people to feel bad if they haven’t sought help sooner because they couldn’t afford it.
“It’s not a cost anyone’s planning for,” he said. “If you want to fix it, but you don’t feel like you have the money up front, that’s really hard.”
When the Busk doctors hire new staff, they make sure they’re picking compassionate people, since a lot of people are afraid of dental work. Many have also been shamed in the past for not taking good enough care of their teeth—a shame that backfires, says Dr. Ryan, when it prevents people from getting the care they need.
“It’s just water under the bridge to us—it doesn’t matter what happened in the past,” says Dr. Ryan. “We just try to help them take the next step.”