What a whirlwind the last 2 months have been! It has been a stressful and scary time filled with uncertainty and unknown for what the future may hold. Our office is blessed to be part of such a wonderful community, and it has been heartwarming to see the community come together like it has. We are all thankful for our health and the health of our families and friends during this time and are endlessly thinking about those directly and indirectly affected by this unfortunate pandemic.
While we are excited to get back to the office (we miss our patients!), the reopening of our office is happening in phases to keep our staff and patients safe. We’ve spent the past several weeks reading, learning, and studying how we can best serve our patients as safely as possible during this time. As a dental office, we already have very robust infection control protocols in place meant to combat a myriad of infectious diseases, but given the nature of COVID-19, we’ve implemented several additions to these protocols to better protect ourselves and our patients.
The first is the addition of Ultra HEPA air filtration units. These units are individually equipped to filter a room size larger than our entire office 1x/hour, so in our smaller space, the air will be filtered multiple times per hour and will filter particles down to 0.003 microns (the smallest COVID-19 particle is thought to be 0.06 microns).
We will continuously disinfect commonly touched surfaces such as doorknobs, countertops, pens, etc. (anything someone might touch from the front desk to the treatment room) at high frequency.
We will heavily screen patients over the phone, and again when they present to their appointment. We will take temperatures on everyone upon arrival. If you are not feeling well or have been in large groups of 10 or more in the past 7 days, we kindly ask that you reschedule your appointment.
For the immediate future, we will not use our waiting room for patients or family. We will utilize a “virtual waiting room” to minimize patient to patient contact. Patients will be asked to call our office when they arrive for their appointment, but remain in their car or outside until we call them to come in. We ask that patients avoid bringing friends and family with them to their appointments as they will be asked to stay outside or in the car. Exceptions will be made for children or those with special needs, and those attending the appointment with them will also be required to go through the screening process.
We have removed all magazines and the treasure chest from the front office.
Patients will be asked to wear a mask or cloth face covering to their appointment, and we will have hand sanitizer available for use upon arrival.
The number of patients in the office will be limited with extended time between appointments to support patient distancing and leave extra time for air filtration and disinfection.
Patients will use a pre-treatment rinse prior to any aerosol-generating procedure. This has been shown to be effective at killing bacteria and viruses for a short time, so even if a patient does happen to be a silent carrier of the virus, this will significantly decrease the viral load in their mouth and the environment!
All team members will be screened daily with temperatures taken and asked to stay home if they are not feeling well.
Our team will wear additional personal protective equipment to keep them safe, and have all been trained on the latest practices for minimizing transmission of the virus.
During this time things may seem different in the dental office just as they are in our regular lives, protective protocols will continue to evolve as the world learns more about this virus and how to keep everyone safe. Rest assured that we will stay up to date with all new developments, and will implement all recommended protocols designed to keep you and our team safe while here in the office.
Please be patient with us as we implement these new changes and work on rescheduling patients who missed an appointment in order of urgency. We are trying to see patients in pain first, then patients with urgent care needs. We will work through our list as swiftly as possible, so please be patient and wait for us to call you. We will start seeing patients on May 11 with pain or urgent care needs. Routine hygiene will resume on June 1.
We truly appreciate your trust and loyalty and hope to return that with the honest, high-quality care we love to provide to you and your family. We have all missed our patients as well as each other, and are very excited to see everyone back at the office!
Best wishes to you and your families!
David A. Bennett DDS, and Team
