Important Information Regarding COVID-19

5/30/2020

To our 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.

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 ask that you please be patient and understand that we will do our best to accommodate your scheduling needs as we know many of you are anxious to get back into our office.

During this time, we have implemented additional safety precautions to help protect our patients and staff.

Here is what you can expect:

• We will postpone treatment for any patient who has experienced the following symptoms within 14 days of the scheduled appointment date: fever, cough, loss of taste and/or smell, flu-like symptoms, difficulty breathing or shortness of breath, and fatigue. If you have been in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 in the last 16 days, we will also postpone your treatment.
• If you have preexisting health conditions (as recommended by CDC) such as diabetes, chronic lung disease or asthma, serious heart conditions, are immunocompromised, or chronic kidney or liver disease, we recommend you do not visit the office at this time. If you fall into this category but need to accompany a child or family member for a visit, please call our office as we will handle this request on a case-by-case basis.
• We will contact you to schedule or confirm your appointment and ask some screening questions. We are reworking the schedule to accommodate those patients with the most urgent dental needs. Imagine rescheduling two months of appointments. Please be patient with us.  The appointment times will be longer, and it might mean that you are offered fewer options, as we need extra time between patients to clean and sanitize properly and to allow for social distancing.
• Every person entering our office is expected to wear your own face covering. Once you arrive at our office, remain in your vehicle and call to let us know you have arrived. We will come out to get you and once inside we will take your temperature, it must not be over 100.3 and ask a few more screening questions. We ask that you come inside alone, extra people in the office compromise everyone.
• We will have you use hand sanitizer 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. Upon entering the treatment room you will be provided a pre-treatment antiviral/antibacterial rinse.
• 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.
• Our doctor and staff will always be wearing all the recommended personal protective equipment (PPE) including a mask.
• 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 any one area at any time.
• If you have any changes to dental insurance or health history, we would like to take care of that prior to your appointment. You can email or text us with the updates.  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.

Thank you for being our patient. We value your trust and loyalty and look forward to seeing everyone.

Sincerely,

Dr. Steven Seibert and our entire Staff