Tzu Chi Health Center, Alhambra

Tzu Chi Health Center, Alhambra is a community health center dental clinic in Alhambra, CA, operated by Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, which runs 3 clinics in California.

The health center is open about 40 hours a week, though dental sessions are usually a subset of that.

Clinic Details

A look-alike meets every requirement of the federal Health Center Program — including the income-based sliding fee discount and seeing patients regardless of ability to pay — but does not receive the federal grant that funds the others. For you as a patient the discount works the same way; what differs is the funding behind it.

Planning Your Visit

1000 S Garfield Ave, Alhambra, CA 91801

The published number is 626-281-3383. It may be a shared scheduling line. Say which site you mean and that you want dental rather than medical, or you can be booked into the wrong queue.

Things to settle on the phone first: the dental hours, and which days appointments run, whether new dental patients are being taken, and the current wait, what a first visit costs, before and after any discount, whether your insurance or Medicaid dental plan is accepted, by plan name, and what to bring for the sliding fee application.

Dental Services

This clinic has not published a list of the treatments it provides. Expect the routine treatments to be available. The question worth asking is about the expensive ones: root canals, dentures and oral surgery are handled in house at some health centers and referred out at others.

Costs and Coverage

Charges are set against household income and household size rather than a fixed fee schedule. Where the thresholds fall is decided by Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation, so what a friend paid elsewhere is not a guide. Ask them to run your household through it before you commit to a treatment plan. Our guide to applying for the discount lists the documents to bring.

No Medicaid registration has been recorded for this clinic, which is not the same as Medicaid being refused. What California Medicaid covers for adults is a state decision and has been cut and restored in several states; for children the benefit is required nationally. The Medicaid dental page covers how to check yours.

Dental Providers at This Clinic

Alongside general dentistry, providers registered in periodontics, for gum disease practice at this address. That is not the same as the clinic taking new patients for those treatments, or the discount covering them, so name the treatment when you call.

Common Questions

Other Clinics Operated by Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation

Buddhist Tzu Chi Medical Foundation operates 2 other clinics in 2 other communities in California. Asking the scheduling line which site can see you soonest is usually faster than calling each in turn; the shortest wait is not always the closest clinic. A sliding fee determination made at one of its clinics commonly carries across to the others, so income documents may not need providing twice. What is treated at one site is no guide to another, so confirm with the clinic you actually intend to visit.

Other Dental Clinics Nearby

Distances are as the crow flies. Wait times are set clinic by clinic, so ask each one rather than assuming.

• CSC Community Health Center - San Gabriel Valley - STE 126 — Alhambra, less than a mile away
• CSC Community Health Center - San Gabriel - Medical Mobile Van — San Gabriel, about 1.5 miles away
• HCHC - San Gabriel — San Gabriel, about 1.9 miles away
• Garfield Health Center Atlantic Dental Clinic — Monterey Park, about 2.3 miles away