Dental Schools

09/19/2016 Creighton University Breaks Ground On New $84.5 Million Dental School.

The Omaha (NE) World-Herald (9/15, Anderson) reported Creighton University officials broke ground last Thursday for a new $84.5 million dental school. The 200,000-square-foot structure is expected to be complete in July 2018, allowing “the space-constrained School of Dentistry to increase enrollment in the four-year program by 30 students a year, increasing total enrollment from 340 to 460 beginning in 2018.” In addition, “the new building also will allow the school to treat more patients...and provide updated spaces and technology for both students and patients.”

>> this will increase Creighton's revenue by $1,775,280 per year in Tuition/Fees alone!!!! How is the Dean going to spend that? That is 1.7M in student debt that the US taxpayer is on the hook for?

Response from a dental school dean regarding D.r Christenson comments

In defense of Deans who are researchers:

Clinical operations and education are designed, managed, and operated, by clinical faculty. The system we have now is a product of clinical educators and not researchers who view dental schools as training “sandboxes” to meet narrow competency requirements.

The clinical leaders at dental schools can change and operate their dental education clinics as patient care centers or general dentistry clinics or comprehensive care clinics or dental hospitals.

Deans may be blamed for not redefining the mission of their clinical operations (from training clinics to real patient care centers).

Dr. Christensen’s raises several good points that should be considered. However, the solutions are more complex and not linear.

For example, how can insurance companies adjust fees for quality when the profession has not yet defined quality of all dental procedures. And should dental insurance companies decide on reimbursement based on quality? The law of the averages or norms drives insurance payments and not segmentation of care based on quality. And should we accept that dentists provide care that does not meet the same standard of quality?

The decline in the net income of dentists is a major concern for all Deans. Because following this decline there will be default on loan payments and following defaults there will be a decline in dental applications……