Hi everyone! We hope you are all staying home and staying safe during this time. We wanted to share with you a few updates in regards to COVID-19.
As of March 23rd, 2020, Whitley Family Dental is only seeing dental emergency and urgent care appointments. With a smaller dental team in place, we are working our normal business hours to accommodate these emergency patients. If you have a dental emergency, please call the office Monday - Thursday anytime between 8am - 5pm Central Time. If you call outside of these hours, please leave us a message and it will be immediately routed to our staff on call.
As of Governor Greg Abbott's executive order GA-09, all elective medical, surgical, and dental procedures in Texas are postponed until April 21, 2020 at 11:59pm. This means we can resume our normal schedule on Wednesday, April 22, 2020. This date IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE if the Governor extends the GA-09 executive order. We will keep you informed as we learn more.
In the meantime, we encourage you to brush and floss, and remember that COVID-19 is an enveloped virus. Listerine is known to kill 99.9% of enveloped viruses. As an additional preventative measure for the safety of our staff, we ask that our emergency patients swish for 30 seconds prior to their emergency treatment. Whitley Family Dental will provide the Listerine for all emergency patients. We encourage our patients to continue to use Listerine (or a generic brand with the same active ingredients) 2-3 times per day for 30 seconds at home. NOTE: THIS IS NOT A CURE FOR COVID-19!
We ask our patients to follow the Whitley Family Dental Enhanced Safety Measures if you have an emergency appointment scheduled with us. Please continue reading on to learn about the extra precautions we are taking and what to expect if you come into our office during this time.
Pre-Screening Requirements PRIOR to arrival:
1. We will ask you if you are experiencing symptoms such as fever, coughing, or shortness of breath.
2. We will ask you if you have traveled outside the State of Texas in the last 14 days. If your answer is yes, we will ask additional questions regarding hotspots around the country.
3. We will ask you several questions to ensure the defined criteria is met for Emergency or Urgent Care dental appointments
Expectations Upon Arrival to Whitley Family Dental:
1. We will ask you to not touch any surface in the office. We have sterilized all surfaces, door knobs, light switches, phones, wood furniture, etc. with our normal hospital grade germicidal, but we still prefer that you do not come in contact with ANY surface while you are in our office.
2. We will take your temperature in the waiting room before we bring you back for your treatment.
3. If you need a written medical or HIPAA update, rather than using our online system forms update, you will be given a sterilized writing pen and clipboard.
4. There are no longer magazines or newspapers in the waiting room, so if you do not enjoy television, please bring a book, magazine, or newspaper with you and be sure to take it home.
5. If a second patient comes in the sterilized waiting room, we will ask you to sit 6 feet apart to honor social distancing.
6. We will open all doors for you as you exit the waiting room and when you leave our practice,
7. We will ask you to swish with Listerine prior to your treatment. The Listerine is provided, and poured, by our office. COVID-19 is an enveloped virus. Listerine kills 99.9% of enveloped viruses and swishing for 30 seconds is a safety measure for our staff while performing treatment.
8. We will clean the sink after each patient empties the cup of Listerine.
9. We have additional protocols in place that we will explain if you need to use the restroom. We will perform a germicidal cleaning of the restroom after each patient uses the restroom.
10. If you need to make a credit card payment, we will touch the credit card machine for you and press the buttons, of course, with your approval. Even though you never touch the credit card or the signing pad, we will still disinfect the credit card machine and signing pad after every patient.
11. If you have checked out and there is a person in the waiting room, a member of the Whitley Family Dental staff will escort you out of the building through the staff entrance…again, to ensure social distancing.
12. If you have a young child that you are caring for, PLEASE DO NOT bring them to your appointment. We will be happy to reschedule your appointment when you have childcare available.
Thank you all for the continued love and support. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Tamara Whitley via Facebook or Instagram messaging, email : info@billwhitleydds.com, or call the office at 214-320-9679.
Sending all of our love and prayers for the safety of our patients. We are all Americans...together, we can get through ANYTHING!