The entire Macri Dental team is dedicated to protecting you and your smile and your oral and overall health. We’ve never compromised in terms of patient safety, and now we’re doing even more. Everything that’s being put in place ensures you and our family feel safe and comfortable coming to our Greenwood Village dental office.
Learn More About the New Pre-Appointment Screening Protocols
Due to COVID-19, we’ll now be texting you with health pre-screening questions before you come to the office. We’ll go over whether you have:
- Experienced virus-related symptoms
- Traveled recently
- Come in contact with anyone with COVID-19
When you answer “no” to these questions, we’ll advise you to remain in your car. We’ll then text you when it’s time to come to the door. Upon arrival inside the office, you’ll no longer enter the waiting room. You’ll rinse your mouth with a .5 percent hydrogen peroxide rinse, which can effectively kill any virus present in your mouth if you happen to be an asymptomatic carrier of COVID-19. Once you’re comfortable in the chair, we’ll ask that you sign a COVID-19 consent form.
Added Steps for Sterilization and Disinfection
After every patient completes their appointment, we spray the treatment rooms with Optim — a strong surface disinfectant shown to eradicate the virus. We bag all of the surfaces we come into contact with inside our rooms. When working with patients, we rely on negative pressure devices called Isodry and Purevac to capture any aerosol created during procedures to minimize the possibility of spreading viral matter into the air.
One of our favorite aspects of our office is the ability to open our windows. When we moved in, it was a novelty to just be able to get some fresh air and hear birds outside. Now, we use it to exchange air all day rather than recirculating the air in the building air conditioning system.
Our dental instruments are taken from the treatment room into sterilization after a patient leaves. The instruments are scrubbed then put in an ultrasonic shaker for 10 minutes. Following that, the instruments are bagged and put into the autoclave to be sterilized. After the sterilization cycle is complete, the tools are placed in a clean area until needed. The autoclave is tested weekly to ensure it is working correctly and sterilizing properly.
Your Smile. Your Safety. Your Security.
In addition to some of the other changes around the office, we’ve also asked that our team members wear their regular clothes to work and change into their scrubs upon arrival. At the end of each day, we put our scrubs in the on-site laundry room and switch back to our street clothes. You will see our team members wearing face shields for protection from any aerosol. We’ve upgraded to level three masks to comply with all state and federal mandates. You’ll also find that we’ve added acrylic shields at both the front desk and the business office to provide a barrier between patients and the front desk staff.
Please note that we’re doing everything we can to ensure everyone’s safety; therefore, appointments can take longer due to these additional protocols. We are scheduling accordingly and letting everyone know how long to expect to be in the office for their visit. Also, we feel strongly that the duty of keeping patients and ourselves safe is at the core of our business. As a result, the cost is not passed on to the patients. We do not charge extra for the additional precautions or time, nor have we raised any of our prices to compensate.