Coronavirus Update - Dental Health Center of Northern Virginia

Effective May 4st Dental Health Center will be reopening following these protocols and any new guidelines the CDC recommends. Your dental health is important for many reasons but among those is keeping your oral microbiome healthy so your immune system is free to fight off other illnesses/systemic conditions like COVID-19.

We will be happy to answer any questions remotely and appreciate your cooperation and understanding during this process. We are here for you.

Stay Happy, Healthy and Safe,

Dental Health Center of Northern Virginia

To Our Dental Family

First we hope everyone has stayed healthy during this difficult time. During our office closure Dental Health Center of Northern Virginia has been making preparations for reopening the office taking all steps necessary in ensuring patient safety. In order to properly protect our patients and staff members we have instituted new protocols we require everyone to be compliant with. They are as follows:

DHCNOVA will be calling patients 1 day prior to their dental appointment to:

Screen patient health and risk factors for COVID-19
Asking for any changes to dental insurance and contact information
Collecting copayments if there are any or leaving a credit card on file to run after upcoming appointment
Schedule visit (next cleaning or follow up)
Inform patients of our COVID-19 office protocol
Answer any questions that might arise

COVID-19 Office Protocol

Patients must come ON TIME for their appointments. Your appointment is set specifically so there will be no other patient scheduled to arrive at the office at the same time. If you arrive early, please wait in your vehicle.
Patients must wear a mask to their appointment. We will instruct you on when to remove and put back on your mask.
Patients will come alone to their appointment (with the exception of a single guardian) Drivers are welcome to wait in the vehicle. We will call you 15 minutes before the appointment ends to pick up outside the office.
Patients will maintain social distancing while in the office. The only personnel that will be within 6ft are your providers in treatment rooms
In the treatment room patients rinse with hydrogen peroxide for 1 minute
When your appointment completes patients will put their mask back on and please exit through the front door without stopping at the front desk.

Please dress warm to your appointment, our office will be kept at 67 degrees F.
We will not be offering blankets or headphones for appointments

Steps we have taken to ensure your safety

Added an additional treatment room to allow a staggered appointment schedule. We will only be scheduling half of our treatment rooms at a time on a rotating schedule. This will help ensure your treatment room has been thoroughly disinfected and empty for a period of time prior to your arrival so you will not have to wait in the reception area.

Hired additional staff. We have employed additional hygienists and assistants to help streamline your appointments and allow our hygienist to have an assistant during your cleaning to maintain our high quality while minimize generated aerosols to 1% or less.

Purchased additional personal protective equipment. Our staff will be wearing n95 masks plus a second mask over it and a face shield as an additional barrier. Please do not be offended if we keep our masks on during your visit, it is for our and your safety.

Installed Merv 18 Ultra-HEPA air purifiers. We have placed large Medical grade virus filtering air purifiers throughout the office. They will be running during patient care and purify the air in treatment areas every 6 minutes.

Unmanned reception area. Our administrative team will be onsite and may not be at the front desk reception area. This is to help maintain social distancing and minimize time spent/number of patients in the office at one time. We have also removed all magazines, pillows, and toys from the reception area to avoid contact spread.

Ozone/UV-C/HVAC antivirus disinfection. An ozone generator with UV-C disinfects the entire office every night. We also have added virus air filtration into our HVAC system.

Added patient communication software. We will be able to better communicate with you as well as add additional features including paperless forms and payments via text.

We will be happy to answer any questions remotely and appreciate your cooperation and understanding during this process. We are here for you.

Stay Happy, Healthy and Safe,

Dental Health Center of Northern Virginia