Winn Smiles holds free dental clinic
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — Dental care is something that many take for granted. With rising costs of living, personal health is something that quite a few Americans have put on the back burner.
Dr. Brad Winn, dentist and owner of Winn Smiles tells us, “So we’re doing an event called smile from the heart. We shut down our normal operations don’t see our normal patients and open up our office to the community and just take care of basic needs that a lot of people have a hard time meeting, so we’re doing cleanings, fillings, extractions. Just basic care that a lot of people are not getting done either. Sometimes it’s financially driven but there are lots of reasons.”
Laura Dye is the operations manager at Winn Smiles. speaking about the clients they’ve had during the day, she told us, “Really I hear from a lot of patients that it’s been a very long time since they’ve had a cleaning or maybe they’ve got a tooth that they’ve been in pain with for months and they just haven’t been able to afford to come in and get anything taken care of and they don’t have dental insurance and it’s just outside of the real possibility for them and so many, many patients are always so appreciative because we’re able to give them something that they can’t get any other way.”
Dr. Winn continues, “Number one we’re here to serve. Everybody needs to get paid and you know so it takes revenue to take care of what we do on our normal daily operating basis, but I think occasionally it’s nice to just unravel all of that and just not be tied to any of it and just help people. That’s kind of what it boils down to because you know it feels good for me and you know historically we’ve done this for a good number of years. I think most of our team members would say he’s one of their favorite days of the year.”
If you missed today’s event, don’t worry. Winn Smiles’ Cleveland location will hold another free Smiles from the Heart event on Friday, September the 18th from 8AM to 3PM.
