Medical and Dental Services

Dental Clinic

The VAHS Dental Clinic is in its twelfth year of operation. With the support of administrative staff and a full-time dentist, services are provided by volunteer dentists, hygienists, assistants, and students. Our Dental Clinic offers preventative and urgent services to patients with little or no dental coverage; it is the most accessible and affordable option to address basic dental needs for people in the Lower Mainland.

Service Changes Due to COVID-19

The Dental Clinic is reactivating services following the College of Dental Surgeons of British Columbia's guidelines of Defining Care - this means our dentists will determine which urgent services can be provided to patients at this time.

We are currently only providing Emergent and Essential (urgent) care.

Please call or email the office for pre-screening. We will contact you either to provide phone support or a potential appointment.

Appointment Only - No Walk-Ins. Please call or email to confirm times.

Current operating hours:

Monday to Friday from 9:00 AM-4:00 PM + 1 Saturday per month

The clinic will halt the patient daily intake once the maximum patient capacity has been reached. We follow provincial COVID-19 protocols and are performing pre-screenings over the phone.

Treatments offered:

Screening treatments: Dental exams, cancer screening, x-rays (Periapical, TMJ, Panoramic, CT SCAN), prescriptions.
Hygiene: cleanings, oral hygiene instructions.
Cosmetic treatments: teeth whitening.
Basic treatments: Dental fillings, dental sealants.
Endodontic treatments: simple and complex root canals (provided by a Specialist and/or General Dentist).
Surgical treatments: simple/surgical teeth extractions.
Major restorative treatments: inlays, onlays, crowns, bridges, veneers, dentures & partial dentures (provided by a Denturist).
Misc treatments: Night guards.

Treatments that we don’t provide:

Full or Gas Sedation
Orthodontic treatments
Major gum surgeries

General patient intake policy:

Everybody is welcome.
If a person has coverage (ministry/status), they are asked to bring their IDs. No exceptions are granted. Examples of IDs needed: Care card number, Indigenous status, parole (ID card & officer’s contact information), interim federal health program (IFHP-UCI #), healthy kids’ program, dental insurance, etc.
If a person does not have any type of dental coverage, a donation fee will be suggested at the time of the screening.
Any patient’s need will be evaluated based on our daily capacity and budgetary limitations.
We reserve the right to deny any treatment at any time. We practice ZERO TOLERANCE to inappropriate behaviour towards our staff/volunteers and other patients.
We reserve the right to screen our patients and prioritize treatment.

Booking an appointment (over the phone/email):

Contact information will be needed to book an appointment. This information should include:

Full legal name
Care card and/or status card information (mandatory for people with this coverage)
Phone number
Email address
Preferred contact method

Note: For any patient booking an appointment, if two consecutive “NO-SHOWS” are recorded in our system, our office reserves the right to deny any further appointments and to remove the patient from the waiting list.

Fee schedule for individuals under Income Assistance, Status, Refugees, Parole:

We bill each government program without any exception.
It is the patient’s responsibility to bring their care card number, status card, refugee letter, or parole card with the officer's contact information. We will not accept any patient without this information.
It is the patient's responsibility to cover, by donation, any outstanding cost for treatments that are not covered under their respective programs.
Our office reserves the right to deny treatment beyond our office capacity and budgetary limitations.

Root Canals and Surgical treatments:

Not all root canal and surgical treatments are the same, therefore special considerations will be given to extremely complex extractions, re-treatment of root canals, highly complex multiple root canals, and apical chronic tooth infections.

For financial information (donation/internal fee guide), please contact our front desk.

Methods of payment are:

Debit/Credit Card (Visa, Amex, MasterCard)
Cash
Cheques issued to Vancouver Aboriginal Health Society – memo: dental clinic donation
Online – Online service and using under the memo section: dental clinic donation. Please save the email confirmation as proof of payment.