COVID-19

We are happy to say that the American Dental Association and the North Carolina State Dental Board have provided guidelines for our office to reopen on MAY 11, 2020. While many things have changed, our commitment to providing you exceptional dental care in a safe environment has remained unwavering.

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 do this to make sure that our infection control procedures are current and adhere to each agencies’ recommendations.

Starting when we reopen on May 11, you will see some changes when it’s time for your next appointment.  We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff. For example:

• Our office will communicate with you beforehand to ask some screening questions. You’ll be asked those same questions again when you are in the office. If you or anyone you have been in contact with in the last 14 days has been symptomatic, we ask that you call to reschedule to a later time.
• Upon arrival to our office, we ask that you please DO NOT come inside. We ask that you send a text message to our office number to let us know you are here. We will communicate back to you to let you know it’s time for you to enter into the office. This will keep our waiting room with the fewest number of people and allow us to properly adhere to social distancing. We will do our best to allow greater time between patients to reduce waiting times for you.
• We are utilizing online payment options for paying patient balances so that we can have a contact-free process for you. We can email or text a secure link to you or you can simply visit our website at ckdentistry.com to use this option for payment. We can send all patient forms, consents and treatment plans via encrypted links to your email or through text to allow you to sign these forms from your personal device contact-free.
• 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, and we will be doing a temperature scan on anyone that enters the office upon arrival.
• Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients. That might mean that you’re offered fewer options for scheduling your appointment. We are adding Friday hours to help accommodate the scheduling process and are utilizing our private rooms to ensure proper social distancing for our patients. Our open bay area will currently be limited to one family at a time.
• We ask that patients that are comfortable with our team and our processes to come in on their own and guardian can wait in the car. If you need to accompany your child to their appointment we ask that only one parent/guardian in the office and siblings that do not have appointments do not come to the office. We ask anyone that is entering the office to wear a face mask upon entering. All companions must provide their own face mask.
• Due to the increased demand and extreme inflation of costs for PPE (personal protective equipment), please understand that our office will be charging a one-time fee of $15.00 per patient. This fee is currently being charged by dental offices across the nation to help cover the exorbitant cost of this equipment due to its high demand. We hope that this inflation of cost is temporary and will normalize in the near future. Thank you for your understanding.

All of these precautions and procedures are designed to have the fewest number of people in an area of the office at the same time.  Our patients’ dental health and medical safety remain our top priority as we navigate these new challenges. We will continue to show our usual warmth, compassion and technological standards that you have come to expect and appreciate over the last 10 years. Our objective has always been to provide the highest quality pediatric dental care. We look forward to seeing you again and are happy to answer any questions you may have regarding our new safety procedures. To make an appointment, please call our office at 704-790-0590.

We value your trust and loyalty and look forward to welcoming back our patients

Sincerely,

Bevin K Malley, DDS
Carolina Kids Dentistry