Our team at Downtown Dental hopes that you and your loved ones remain safe and healthy.
Covid-19 (and its variants) is still a part of our lives. For that reason, we are following CDC and State of California guidelines for healthcare facilities. That means that all patients regardless of vaccination status are still required to wear a mask when entering our office. You can remove your mask once you are seated in your room and your treatment is about to begin.
Hygiene and safety protocols implemented at Downtown Dental
So we are very serious about covid and we’ve installed new precautions to help our patients stay safe, as well as all of our staff to stay safe. So, because of covid we now have a virtual waiting room. So, when individuals arrive at your appointment, you actually call us to let you know that you’re here and then we give you the green light when to come up, so this way there’s not many patients waiting there’s no waiting room, you’re not going to be in contact with a bunch of different individuals. Now we take your temperature at the door and we ask you specific questions related to covid if you’ve had any symptoms or flu like you know fever loss of taste loss of smell those are very important things for us because we want to make sure that you are healthy and able to be seen and also to protect us and all of our staff. In addition to screening at the door, we also will have you do a pre-procedural rinse in the room and you wear your mask throughout walking through into the office and when you leave you will walk through the office as well. So we offer hand sanitizer to all the patients and there’s washing stations in every operatory so you’re able to wash your hands. We also thoroughly disinfect every room with hospital grade disinfectant. So not only do we spray the room down with cavicide and a very strong disinfectant, then we let it sit for 10 minutes then we wipe it down twice and between patients. So, there’s like a 20 minute wait time and disinfecting cleaning setting up so that your room is thoroughly sterilized and disinfected and cleaned and ready to go. All of our instruments are sterilized in the autoclave and we make sure and we are 100 percent that we are responsible making sure our patients are entering the room that has been disinfected and cleaned. All of the transactions that happen as far as payments or even validating your parking are going to be done in your operatory because we don’t want to we want to minimize the amount that our patients are going to be interacting even with other patients and waiting and things like that.
Safety and hygiene measures to protect staff and patients including sterilizing all instruments; thoroughly disinfecting rooms; using air filters and Personal Protective Equipment like face shields, masks, gowns, gloves, and eyewear. These measures have helped us get ready to serve you since we opened. For instance, we have resumed dental cleanings with proper protection measures in place for patients and employees.
In the meantime, we advise you to focus on your oral health at home as proper gum health can play a major role in keeping flu- and other viruses at bay. It has been found that common oral bacteria linked to gum disease can suppress immunity, increasing a person’s susceptibility to cold and flu viruses. The benefits of oral intervention to improve patients’ respiratory health have been proven time and again.
Take care of yourself and your loved ones during these difficult times.
Stay safe; stay healthy!
