Highland Medical Center Welcomes Full Time Dentist

The Highland Medical Center once again has a full time dentist on staff. Dr. Djong Hoang’s started at her new position on Monday, and will begin seeing patients Wednesday. She stopped by WVLS to introduce herself, and relate how she came to Highland County.

“My name is Djong Hoang – I’m the new dentist at The Highland Medical Center. I started work today, today’s my first day actually. I went to Virginia Commonwealth University, and before that I was in the Army for eight years. I did hygiene and dental assisting in the Army, and just loved dentistry so much that I decided to go back to school – so now I’m here. I’m living in Monterey – actually, at the place owned by Ms. Cappie Hull, the theme rooms. I’m going to stay there for six months, then look for permanent housing afterwards.

“I was always interested in working in the public sector, so there’s actually a person that one of my friends referred me to, and he’s the person that’s in charge of putting people who are interested in working in public health at different health centers, and I called him up and he said there’s an opening up here if I was interested, and I went up here for a visit, and liked the tranquility, and talked with Debbie and she said there’s a need for dental care up here, so I was like “That’s perfect – I’ll do it.”

Dr. Hoang is not the only dentist on staff – she explained more about this, and the services the clinic offers.

“I’m actually going to be the full time dentist, but we also have another doctor, Dr. Mallow – he works here one day a week, so we have two on staff. We are providing comprehensive care, so if you need your annual check-up – we also see kids as well. We do some root canal, extraction –  we also do restorative work, fillings, white fillings and the silver fillings, we do those. We also do crowns and bridges, as well as if you need dentures or partial, we do that. So we are a comprehensive dental clinic here.

“We not only serve Highland County, we also serve people living in Pendleton, Pocahontas, bath and West Augusta. So anyone living in those areas that need dental care or want dental care, please come in or give us a call and set up an appointment. The phone number is 540-468-6464, or you can visit our website at www.hmc.org.”

It was time to get to the root of the matter, and ask the incisive questions, so I bared my fangs, and went in search of a filling answer from Dr. Hong on why people are scared to go to the dentist.

“Usually, people are afraid, because they probably had a traumatic experience, maybe when they were younger. But we offer laughing gas, so we try and make you feel at ease as much as possible. And I’m always known to be gentle, so my patients always so “oh, you’re so gentle.” So, give me that opportunity to serve you, and you be the judge. Don’t be afraid – if you need care, come on in.”