WE ARE RE-OPENING!

To Our Valued Patients:

We hope that this letter finds you and your family in good health.  Our community has been through a lot over the last few months.  All of us are looking forward to resuming our normal habits and routines.  While many things have changed, one thing that has remained constant is our commitment to your safety and health.

Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice – you may have noticed this during your visits to our office.  Our infection control processes are in place so that when you receive dental care, it is both safe and comfortable.  We would like to describe 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 will experience changes when it is time for your next appointment.  We have initiated these changes to ensure the protection of both our patients and our staff.  Our new protocols are the following:

• Our office will communicate with you before your appointment and ask a series of screening questions.  We appreciate your making every effort to speak to a staff member on the phone so that we can ensure this necessary pre-screening occurs.
   
• We ask that patients call our office once you have parked your car or prior to entering the building to let us know that you have arrived. Once you reach the office, please knock on the door if a staff member is not present to greet you.
   
• Upon arrival at the office, you will be asked a series of screening questions again and your temperature will be taken with an appropriate non-contact thermometer.  If a patient has a temperature of 100.ºF or higher then they will not be allowed to enter the office and will be referred to their physician.
   
• Upon entering the office, we ask that you use hand sanitizer or wash your hands appropriately, if preferred, and wear a mask which we will provide if you do not have one.  Hand sanitizer will be placed throughout the office.
   
• Patients will notice that our office looks different. We will no longer offer magazines, children’s books or any item that is not able to be cleaned and disinfected.  In order to ensure social distancing, we have removed chairs in our reception area and plexiglass barriers are in place at our administration area.
   
• Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients.  This may mean that you are offered fewer options as to scheduling appointments.  We ask that only the patient come into the office if possible.  We understand that parents may accompany their children, but we ask that parents remain in the reception room during their child’s appointment.  (New guidelines require only those delivering patient care and wearing appropriate PPE to be allowed in the treatment room.) Any person accompanying a patient into the office will also be screened and asked to wear a mask while in the reception area.
   
• 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.  There may be isolated times when we call and ask that you remain in your car while we complete care for a patient.
   
• We ask that if patients would like to use a credit card for payment that they call us prior to their appointment with the card information or provide it while in the treatment room. This will ensure no cross-contamination while handling credit cards and using our credit card machine. 

At this time, we will not be performing hygiene appointments until June in order to give us time to evaluate the changes needed to ensure both the safety of our patients and hygienists. 

We are looking forward to seeing our patients again and are very happy to answer any questions that you may have about the steps we are taking to keep you and every patient safe in our practice.  We will also post any updates or changes to our website (www.loveandmiller.com) and our Facebook page. 

Thank you for being our patient.  We value your trust and loyalty and look forward to welcoming back our patients, neighbors and friends.

Sincerely,

Melanie Love, DDS
Mark Miller, DDS
And Staff