05/19/2020
COVID-19 Update
Office reopening info and new policies for patients to be aware of:
We are excited to announce that we will be reopening the office to non-emergency procedures on June 1st.
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.
Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice and you may have seen this during your visits to our office. Our infection control processes are made so that when you receive care, it’s both safe and comfortable. We want to tell you about the infection control procedures we follow in our practice to keep patients and staff safe.
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.
You may see some changes when it’s 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. Our additional precautions will require our clinical staff to wear enhanced masks and full face shield. These masks make communication exhausting so for the time being, we will need to minimize our social communication in order to focus our energy on your dental well being.
We have hand sanitizer that we will ask you to use when you enter the office. You will also find some in other places in the office for you to use as needed.
We ask everyone to wear a face mask when entering our office and at all times until advised to remove by clinical staff once seated in treatment room. This simple act reduces the spread of germs throughout the non-treatment areas of our office.
Please leave unnecessary personal items at home or in your car during your appointment (examples: jackets, hats, backpacks, etc.)
You will see that we no longer have a waiting room and will no longer offer magazines, children’s toys and so forth, since those items are difficult to clean and disinfect. We will be unable to accommodate extra people at appointments with the patient because we can’t have them in the room and we won’t have a reception area for them to wait either.
Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients thus limiting the number of patients in the office at the same time. That might mean that you’re offered fewer options for scheduling your appointment. We will be offering some extended hours to try to get everyone that had to be postponed back on the schedule as soon as we can. These extended hours are temporary. We are classifying them as “catch-up hours”. It will still take some time to get everyone rescheduled so please be patient with us during this recovery time.
We will do our best to allow greater time between patients to reduce waiting times for you and eliminate patients in the reception area as well as to reduce the number of patients in the office at any one time. Please arrive promptly at your assigned time. If you do arrive early, please wait outside until your appointment time. We will have someone greet you at the door and es**rt you to treatment room. We appreciate your understanding in this matter.
We look forward to seeing you again and are happy to answer any questions you may have about the steps we take to keep you, and every patient, safe in our practice. If your appointment was postponed, we will contact you to get back on the schedule. Again, please be patient as we deal with our 2 1/2 month backlog.
Thank you for being our patient. We value your trust and loyalty and look forward to welcoming back our patients, neighbors and friends.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ann Connors & Dr. Grant Van Beek