Dyess dental clinic named 2014 Medium Dental Clinic OTY Published May 7, 2015 By Senior Airman Peter Thompson 7th Bomb Wing Public Affairs DYESS AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- The dental clinic at the 7th Aerospace Medicine Squadron here, has been recognized as the 2014 Air Force Medical Service Medium Dental Clinic of the Year. Dental clinics have a large impact on the Air Force mission that is often over looked as simply taking care of someone's smile. "Our job is to assure our forces are dentally ready to deploy anywhere in the world at any given time," said Lt. Col. Victor Maggio, 7th AMDS chief of dental services. "Dental typically is the number two reason for people being unable to perform their duties. In the Air Force, we do a very good job making sure our people are taken care of dentally." During 2014, the dental clinic had a 98.2% deployment dental readiness for active duty members, with 74% of those personnel falling under the class one category, meaning they needed zero additional work to deploy. Thirty personnel including dentists, enlisted members, civilians and contractors care for more than 4,300 active duty service members. Additionally, the clinic provides 24-hour emergency dental care through their on-call phone, which allows for immediate care in some incidents. One of the clinics initiatives brought to fruition in 2014 was minimizing the cost of off base referrals by $320,000, by increasing capabilities for dental procedures. To do so, leadership from the dental clinic met with dental care providers from the community to improve and sustain relationships between the on-base and civilian dental clinics. Additionally, dentists at the clinic began completing procedures that hadn't been completed at the clinic regularly. The dental clinic also managed to save money by taking part in processes that they previously relied heavily on civilian clinics for. "Let's say someone was scheduled for a tooth extraction, everything was being done on the outside of our clinic," Maggio said. "Now we do as much as we can before and after the main procedure to save as much tax-payer money as possible." The dental clinic is also a reliable community partner. Three dentists and four dental assistants spent two days volunteering for the Texas Mission Emergency which provided free dental care for people in the community. During the 16 hours of support more than $600,000 worth of dental care was provided to more than 850 patients. With customer satisfaction being one of the clinics biggest goals, the use of an automated survey system has helped the units leadership better understand the patients they help. After each appointment, patients receive a survey which they return anonymously. The changes that were made because of these surveys lead to the clinic being ranked first in Air Combat Command and amongst the highest clinics across the Air Force for customer satisfaction. Maggio says the Dyess dental clinic has been so successful because of that dedication to customer support which makes people want to come and visit them. "We have a great, very cohesive team here, almost like what you see in an overseas environment; we are like a family," Maggio said. "It's not my clinic. It's our clinic. We work together to figure out how we are going to accomplish the mission as a whole. We are in the customer service business so we dedicate much of our time working to surpass our customers' expectations."