San Antonio, Texas, breaks ground on dentistry center for people with disabilities

From the San Antonio Business Journal:

Trinity Surgery Center will break ground on Wednesday on a new state-of-the-art dentistry facility that will provide comprehensive care for special-needs patients.

The partners in the venture say this will be a first-of-its-kind surgery center for San Antonio and for Texas.

The new surgery center will be located in the heart of the South Texas Medical Center on Babcock Road. It will provide comprehensive care to patients who can’t be served in a traditional setting such as those with a dental phobia, autism, down’s syndrome, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, head and spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, hypertension, muscular dystrophy, sickle cell anemia, renal disease and transplant patients, as well as those undergoing chemotherapy.

Partners in the project include Dr. Henry Chu, David Nolan, Steve O’Donnell and Phil Butrum.

Construction on the 6,500-square-foot facility should be completed this summer.

“This is the first dental surgical center to be designed and built in Texas for patients who are unable to receive comprehensive dental treatment in a traditional setting,” Chu explains. “This center has been my dream for years and in the planning for the last two years. Therefore, my partners and I are extremely excited to introduce this revolutionary concept to San Antonio and Central Texas.”

The surgery center will be staffed with registered nurses and physician anesthesiologists. It will have three pre-op and three post-op beds, two fully-equipped, sterile operating rooms and two dental-specific treatment rooms.

The partners in the Trinity Surgery Center project say that until now, a dentist needing general anesthesia for a special-needs patient was required to utilize an out-patient surgical center. But availability can be limited.

The new center will have wider parking spaces, a covered drop-off zone, a wheel chair lift, wheel-chair-friendly floor treatment and calm lighting.