To Our Dear Patients,
We hope this letter finds you and your family in good health. Our community has been through a lot over the last few months, and all of us are looking forward to resuming our normal habits and routines. While many things have changed, one thing has remained the same: our commitment to your safety.
We have been carefully monitoring COVID-19 and how it is affecting the practice of dentistry. In addition, we have been studying the latest sterilization procedures that have been developed because of it. Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice and you may have seen this during your visits to our office.
Our office follows infection control recommendations made by the American Dental Association (ADA), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
We follow the activities of these agencies so that we are up-to-date on any new rulings or guidance that may be issued. We do this to make sure that our infection control procedures are current and adhere to each agencies’ recommendations. In order to do that, there will be additional protective measures used for each patient which will have an added cost of $20 to each appointment which will be submitted to your insurance company like any other procedure and will be your responsibility to pay in case your insurance company refuses to pay.
You may see some changes when it is time for your next appointment. We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff. For example:
- Our office will communicate with you beforehand to ask some screening questions. You’ll be asked those same questions again when you are in the office.
- It is recommended that you would be wearing a mask when entering the building. Please keep your mask on until you are in the operatory and are asked to remove it.
- It is recommended to bring our own pen to sign any necessary documents to avoid using our office pen.
- We have hand sanitizer that we will ask you to use when you enter the office. You will also find some in the reception area for you to use as needed.
- You may see that our waiting room will no longer offer magazines, and reading material since those items are difficult to clean and disinfect.
- We can no longer offer drinking water in our waiting area
- Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients. That might mean that you’re offered fewer options for scheduling your appointment.
- We will do our best to allow greater time between patients to reduce waiting times for you, as well as to reduce the number of patients in the reception area at any one time.
While there is still a danger of a resurgence of the virus, we believe that essential dental health can no longer wait. Now that the worst is behind us (we hope) it is time to start re-prioritizing again. After careful consideration, we have decided to reopen our doors and see our patients again starting June 1st, 2020.