The Mobile Dental Clinic for Residential Aged Care Facilities, a service that provides dental care for up to 50 per cent of nursing home residents from 23 aged care facilities across the ACT, took out the overall win in the ACT Quality in Healthcare Awards.

The clinic fills a vital gap in the healthcare system with a 2008 study by Dr Clive Rogers, a senior lecturer in geriatric dentistry from the University of Western Australia, showing that 89 per cent of dentists he surveyed did not believe that decent standards of elderly dental care were being met.

"It's something brand new, not just to the ACT, but we're really the first jurisdiction that has a dedicated aged care outreach program on the scale that we're doing it," said Dr Therese Coleman, who has been working with the clinic.

Although the job has its challenging moments, there are more than enough bright moments in the day to keep the clinic staff positive.

"Once I was helping a dementia patient out of the dental chair. She had reverted back to Portuguese and couldn't remember any English," Dr Coleman said.

"I held her hands to help her up and she just started dancing with me and singing. It was so sweet and you don't get that same sort of interaction in a regular dental clinic."

ACT Dental Program director Loretta Bettiens said the clinic was improving access.

"We're actually coming out to people who need help rather than expecting people to be able to get into a clinic," she said.

After receiving three years of funding from the ACT Labor government to build the truck and launch the program, mobility and access were the foremost aims on the minds of those involved.

The clinic comes equipped with a dental chair, X-rays, a mobile hoist, a ceiling-mounted sling lift for patient transfers, all electronic patient records and a full sterilisation unit.

Not only does the Mobile Clinic team provide a full range of dental treatment to aged care residents, but they take measures to also ensure that not only the residents, but the staff and the relatives of residents are educated on oral hygiene.

"We have a hygienist come in after us just to reinforce everything we do and educate clients a bit more about oral health," said Ajay Sandhu who has been working closely with the clinic.

The annual award is open to all health services within the ACT, including private hospitals, general practitioners, private health care providers and students studying a health-related discipline.