We are committed to ensuring the safety of our patients, staff, and community, and are carefully monitoring the COVID-19 pandemic. We are keeping a close watch on all communications from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), state and local health officials, and other local health care providers.
We want to let you know that our office will be complying with the recommendation of the Virginia Dental Association to “postpone any non-emergency dental care starting 3/17/2020”. We do this with hopes that we will be able to continue our normal patient care in the near future. If you have routine non-emergent dental care scheduled on a day we will be closed, our office will be contacting you to cancel that appointment. We hope to be able to reschedule that appointment in the very near future.
We have always had public health first in mind, with cleaning and disinfecting protocols, but upon resuming regular patient care we will be taking extra precautions.
So… when we resume regular patient care, please keep the following in mind:
When in doubt, stay home:
- When you come in for your visit, please be aware that we will be asking patients with any signs of active illness to reschedule.
- We will be checking the temperature of every person that enters our office, whether they are a patient, guardian, sibling or driver.
- Anyone with a temperature of 100.4 or more will be asked to leave and reschedule.
- Anyone with symptoms that appear to put others at risk (e.g. coughing, fever, shortness of breath) will be asked to leave and reschedule.
- If you have been in contact with someone with active symptoms (e.g. your spouse or child has a fever) we ask you to reschedule.
- We understand that this will be an inconvenience for some, but in the interest of public health and safety, these are the steps that we feel are appropriate to keep our patients, staff, and community safe.
Things you may notice:
- We have removed magazines and other materials from the reception area
- We encourage all patients and visitors to wash their hands upon entering
- We have hand sanitizers and cleaning products at every desk
- Pens are used once then put aside to disinfect
- We will ask each patient, prior to treatment, to rinse with 3% hydrogen peroxide before each appointment.
Things you may not notice:
Acting on the guidance from the CDC, WHO, other health officials, and using the cleaning procedures that we already have in place here, we are striving to make our office a safe environment for everyone. Our team has developed a strict cleaning regimen and schedule, including bleach, peroxide, and other materials approved by the CDC and WHO to be viricidal and effective in this current environment.
We hope this helps you appreciate the gravity of the current situation. We appreciate you trusting us with the care of you and yours, and we take that responsibility very seriously.
Our office is ready to continue to provide the best local dental care in the safest way possible.
Thank you for your patience during this time.
Please visit the following pages to learn more about how to care for your teeth when dealing with specific dental procedures.