06/19/2020
We hope you and your family are 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.
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:
• Upon arrival, please call or text the office that you are here and wait for our response before entering the practice. We ask everyone to follow the CDC guidelines and wear a mask at all times in common areas until told to remove for your dental procedure.
• At this time, we are limiting the number of people in the practice waiting room. We ask that everyone without an appointment, wait in your car. If you have a child that has an appointment, we are limiting the waiting room area to 1 parent or guardian in the waiting room with a mask as well as 1 aid for our disabled or elderly patients in the marked designated spots to allow accurate social distancing.
• Our office will communicate with you beforehand to ask you some screening questions. You’ll be asked those same questions again when you are in the office.
• 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 and other places in the office for you to use as needed. We will also be taking your temperature, if your temperature exceeds the guidelines from the CDC of 100.4, we will reschedule your appointment no less than 14 days from that date.
• You will be asked to rinse with Peroxyl before any dental work will begin. It helps with killing bacteria and viruses.
• Copay payments will be as paperless as possible. We will be offering text to send payment amounts due to patients, e-mail receipts, and a credit card machine that has a tap card function as well as Samsung pay and Apple pay.
• You may see that our waiting room will no longer offer magazines, children’s toys, and so forth since those items are difficult to clean and disinfect.
• Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients. That might mean that you are 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.
• New vinyl flooring was installed throughout the office to make cleaning and disinfection easy. We also replaced the cabinets and countertops in the treatment rooms.
• HEPA air filters with UV-C lights have been installed in all rooms, as well as a medical-grade air purifying system in the main A/C units. Treatment rooms will be outfitted with additional extra-oral suction devices to capture aerosols immediately.
• We completely renovated the front office area to direct patient flow from one door and out another. We are now completely chartless and paperwork that needs to be completed is able to be sent and signed digitally.
• We will be staggering appointment times to reduce traffic jams around the front desk area.
We are also allowing for much more time for patient appointments in order to sanitize the rooms properly.
• All back-office staff members are also in full PPE and the front office staff is going to be wearing masks as well.
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. To make an appointment, please call our office at 954-752-2970 or request an appointment online.
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. Howard Listopad, Dr. Tammy Finder & Staff
