Welcome back!  We are genuinely thrilled to have the approval of the Governor of the State of Michigan to reopen our doors.  It has been a long wait and we have greatly missed the opportunity to serve as your trusted pediatric dentist and/or orthodontist.

We are excited to announce that we will begin seeing patients in our office on Monday June 1, 2020 at 9:30am.  We are starting with a soft open due to social distancing and personal protective equipment limitations.  Our hours will start as Monday through Friday from 8-2.   Please be patient with us as we are expecting very high call volumes and are working with reduced staff levels in order to comply with social distancing guidelines.

***We are prioritizing the list of patients that have the most urgent dental and orthodontic needs first. Adjustment to new training protocols, equipment and social distancing requirements limit the number of people that can be in the office at one time. We hope to ramp up appointment volume quickly but this is not the current recommendation of the CDC and dental associations.

We will be accepting phone calls as well as making calls starting Monday June 1 starting at 9:30 am, due to in-office training. Please have patience as we may have high call volumes that may overwhelm staffing due to the amount of time we were mandated to be closed for regular dental care.

We are not scheduling appointments by email. All scheduling will be done by phone.***

We appreciate the trust you have placed in us for how we’ve cared for you in the past, but we also feel that it is important to let you know about the actions we have taken to prepare our practice for your arrival:

  • 2 pre-arrival patient screenings
    • 2 days prior to appointment
    • Upon your arrival
  • Mask requirement for all that enter our practice (children ages 1 and 2 are exempt)
  • Temperature checks and hand sanitizer provided for all who enter the office
    • Patients that have a fever may not enter our office and will be rescheduled
  • Team member stay-at-home if sick policy
  • Social distancing cues in office
    • Requesting patients only come with one parent/caregiver and no additional siblings due to capacity restrictions.
  • Removal of all high touch items in the office (magazines, toys, brushing stations, mouth rinses)
  • Plexiglass protection at conversation areas such as check in and check out areas
  • Increased frequency of sanitation of all areas in the office including waiting room chairs
  • Continuation of our already outstanding clinical area and instrument sterilization practices
  • Highly reduced number of patients in the office and waiting room at one time until we establish ability to add capacity
  • New air purification system throughout our office that cycles and scrubs air for contaminants throughout the day
  • Isolation of aerosol generating procedures to private rooms

We feel it is of particular importance to advise our patients that the main visual difference in our practice may be what your doctor is wearing.  We ask that parents discuss our “doctor costumes” with young patients before coming to your next appointment.  You are accustomed to seeing us in pants and button down or polo shirts with our names on them.  This attire will be replaced with scrubs and clinic jackets or gowns much of the time.  Additionally, our masks, respirators and shields may be more noticeable and will obscure our faces much more than before.  Due to the nature of the global pandemic, disposable personal protective equipment is not readily available.  Therefore, to open and remain open, we have acquired many different masks including N95 types respirators and wipe-able hospital grade respirators and shields that will cover more of our faces.

So, our new “dentist costumes” may be a bit different looking to our little patients but we feel it is a necessary precaution as our health care provider team is not able to sit at a distance from you while providing your care.

We are preparing to ensure you will have a great experience upon your return to our office and we are anxious to serve you upon your arrival.  We hope this note reduces some of the unknowns you may be considering when planning a trip to our office for yourself or your child.

We look forward to greeting you upon your arrival!

The Drs. and Team at Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontic Specialists of Michigan