UP Oral Surgeon Gives Patient Payments to Charity
University Park oral surgeon Robert McNeill is teaching his sons — and, he hopes, the community — to give big rather than live large. McNeill’s office will donate all patient payments received in September to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Kidd’s Kids, Costa Rica Mission Challenge/Goats For God, the Texas Dental Association Smiles Foundation, and the Dallas Morning News Charities. Beneficiaries include terminally and chronically ill children and their families, disabled senior citizens, and others in need.
The program was spurred in part by the McNeill family’s recent mission trip to Costa Rica, where the photo above was shot (Nate is the blonde snuggling up to his dad’s head. David’s the one smiling in the back row).
The trip “was just absolutely phenomenal, says McNeill, “especially for kids from the Park Cities to get down there and be with other children.”
Last year, he donated all payments received for a week, and “we all had such a positive experience with our patients, referral offices and our staff that doing it again for a month seemed like a great thing to do,” McNeill said. His practice, North Texas Dental Implants, Oral & Facial Surgery, is located in Garland and Preston Center.
“He decided he could go out and buy a sports car ’cause he’s fixing to turn 40, and go that midlife crisis route,” said clinic spokeswoman Sheila Duck, “or he could do something like this and help people.”
11 comments to "UP Oral Surgeon Gives Patient Payments to Charity"
An anonymous gift is admirable, no doubt. But I sense Bob McNeill’s office shed light on this for the right reasons.
What I didn’t include yesterday:
1. McNeill just hosted a happy hour with other local doctors to talk them into doing the same thing, and in at least a few cases, it worked. (McNeill didn’t tell me about the happy hour. Someone else did.)
2. No dancing around it: A charity conversation is an ice breaker with patients, plenty of whom are already crazy-nervous about getting major dental work done.
McNeill explained outright that this is win-win.
3. On a more personal note: his kids helped pick the charities, and the decision to donate at all was born of a family agreement.
Kudos to Robert McNeill for making a difference.
@ Adam, congratulations on all your anonymous charity work in poor countries, if people only knew how great you were!
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