The video below details how our new personal protective equipment will appear, and will walk you through our current new appointment process. These videos are also available on our office Facebook pages.
Dear Carolina Children’s Dentistry Family,
We are so excited to announce our re-opening! We will start seeing patients on May 12, 2020. This letter is to let you know of what you can expect when you bring your child to their next dental appointment.
First, to promote social distancing, we are currently scheduling recare patients on alternate days to restorative patients. This is so we can provide social distancing not only outside, but within the office as well. Please allow US to call YOU to schedule your child if they have missed an appointment. When we open up the phone lines, we simply will not be able to answer each call at the same time we are trying to reach out to our patients. We have very specific plans for reaching out to you all individually. DON’T CALL US, WE WILL CALL YOU!!
We are requiring only ONE parent per child. Our waiting room is closed, except for patients receiving certain types of appointments, or for the very young. If any other family members or siblings come to your child’s appointment, no parent will be allowed in the building. If your child is old enough to enter the building alone, we ask that they do so. Exceptions to this will be new patients, and other appointments REQUIRING the presence of a parent in the building, such as a young child.
Every person entering the building will have a COVID-19 questionnaire filled out, and their temperature registered with a touchless forehead thermometer. A temperature reading of 100 degrees on parent OR child, WILL disqualify your child from receiving their dental care. A temperature reading of 100 degrees alone is NOT indicative of infection by COVID-19, but is indicative of some variety of illness that can be transmitted. These guidelines set in place by the CDC (Center for Disease Control) are specific, and can NOT be violated.
When you arrive, park at one of the marked parking spaces, and text the phone number on the post with your parking space number, the name and date of birth of your child, and we will begin the remote check-in process. A team member will come to you to review COVID-19 screening paperwork, and will obtain any questions or dental concerns you have to share with the clinical team. Your child will enter the building, stop at our hand sanitizing station, and go DIRECTLY to their pre-assigned chair. For single families, we are using every other chair, which places your child at FURTHER than 6 feet from the next patient. Families will also follow this protocol, but will be seated together. Following your child’s appointment, we will return to the car with your child to discuss any findings with you, and make any future appointments necessary
We are moving to online billing and payments, and adding touchless remote payment options within the office as well.
We recognize that these times have been hard for all of us. We understand that many of you are ready to continue maintaining your child’s dental health, and we are ready, wiling, and able to get you moving!
It will take time to get caught up on everyone’s appointments while also honoring the appointments you already have. For this reason, we will be CONTINUING our teledentistry service for all of you.
Our team has worked tirelessly to make sure that the protocols we have in place are consistent with daily recommendations from the SCDA (South Carolina Dental Association), the ADA (American Dental Association), and the CDC (Center for Disease Control). In this ever changing world, we are changing as recommendations come to us. We recognize that dental health is part of overall health, and that being orally healthy is critical for each of us to live our best lives. As we work out the daily kinks in our new protocols, we ask for your patience and your continued kindness. Our dental team has felt great love from our patients over these last weeks when working with you remotely via Teledentistry. From the bottom of our hearts, we THANK YOU!!!
With love and gratitude,
Dr. Felicia Goins, Dr. Lisbeth Poag, Dr. B Brian Han, Dr. Sharlene Martin, Dr. Joshua Durrant, and the entire teams at Carolina Children’s Dentistry of Sumter and Columbia.
