Living Water Clinic
Case Study
In rural communities across California, access to Medi-Cal dental care for adults is not a gap, it’s a wall. Few providers accept it, and fewer still are within reach. Living Water has a dental clinic on site, but with limited capacity and long wait times, patients in urgent need had no fast path to care. They needed a partner who could triage that need and get the right patients seen sooner.
The Challenge
Living Water Health Centers serves a predominantly low-income, rural population. They have a dental clinic on site, but with only two operatories and a single dentist, capacity is severely constrained. Appointments book out four weeks or more, and there was no system to distinguish patients who needed to be seen urgently from those who could wait. Patients with infections, abscesses, or acute pain were being scheduled alongside routine cases, with no way to move them to the front of the line.
Recruiting additional dental providers to a rural location compounds the challenge. Candidates prefer larger cities and more stable practice environments. Simply adding staff was not a realistic near-term solution. Living Water needed a smarter system, not more resources they couldn’t access.
The Approach
OroMed integrated preventive dental evaluations into both the medical visit workflow and the dental department side of Living Water’s operation. On the medical side, eligible patients now receive a PDE at the point of their primary care visit. On the dental side, the integration created a structured triage process that feeds directly into the scheduling queue.
To address Living Water’s capacity constraints, OroMed deployed a panel of four to five dentists to conduct virtual preventive dental evaluations, bringing dental expertise to patients without requiring Living Water to recruit and retain providers in-house. After each screening, patients receive a physical slip indicating their urgency level, Urgent, Immediate, or Routine, which they bring to the front desk to book their appointment. This allows Living Water’s dental team to sequence care efficiently: urgent patients get seen tomorrow instead of in four weeks.
OroMed operates as a mobile, flexible program, rotating through whatever rooms are available, adapting to the clinic’s rhythm rather than disrupting it. No designated space required.
The Result
Living Water launched in April 2026. In their first month, the program delivered meaningful preventive dental access and, critically, a triage system that finally matched the urgency of care to the speed of scheduling.
Living Water operates seven sites across a rural region where dental access has always been scarce. At this location — two operatories, one dentist — OroMed delivered meaningful preventive care without adding staff, building new infrastructure, or disrupting a team already operating at its limits. Patients who previously waited weeks now have a system that gets the most urgent cases seen first. With six more sites in the network, the opportunity ahead is significant.
26
Preventive dental evaluations per day, launch month average
256
Total patients seen in the first month of operation.
88%
Capture rate, eligible patients receiving a preventive dental evaluation at their medical visit.
