We hope this letter finds you and your family in good health. Our community has been through a lot over the last few months, and all of us are looking forward to resuming our normal habits and routines. While many things have changed, one thing has remained the same: our commitment to your safety. With this being said we are excited to announce that we will be resuming patient care on June 1, 2020.

Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice and you may have seen this during your visits to our office. Our infection control processes are made so that when you receive care, it’s both safe and comfortable. We want to tell you about the infection control procedures we follow in our practice to keep patients and staff safe.

Our office follows infection control recommendations made by the American Dental Association (ADA), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). We follow the activities of these agencies so that we are up-to-date on any new rulings or guidance that may be issued.

You may see some changes when it is time for your next appointment. We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff. For example:

• Our office will communicate with you beforehand to ask some screening questions. This may be done via e-mail, text or phone. Upon entering our building you will be screened then allowed to proceed to our suite. Outside of our suite, your temperature will be taken, hand sanitizer applied and a questionnaire will be asked to fill out.
• Please wear a face covering upon entering the office building. If you do not have one it will be provided to you before entering. It is mandatory for the face covering to be worn at all times in the office over both your nose and mouth until you are directed to remove it for treatment.
• We ask that you limit extra companions to your visit to only essential people to reduce the number of people in the reception area. Companions may be asked to wait in your car while you are being seen. We ask parents to bring only your child that is receiving treatment and please discuss with them the new look at the dental office to ease any fears they may have.
• You may see that our waiting room will no longer offer magazines, children’s toys and so forth, since those items are difficult to clean and disinfect. Seating will be arranged to allow for Social Distancing Guidelines.
• Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients. That might mean that you’re offered fewer options for scheduling your appointment.
• We will do our best to allow greater time between patients to reduce waiting times for you, as well as to reduce the number of patients in the reception area at any one time.
• In trying to reduce contact as much as possible we would prefer payments be made with credit cards over the phone. If paying by check or cash please bring payment in an envelope.

Other information you may be interested in is what changes and implementations we have made to the office for your care.

• We will, as we always have, follow the stringent guidelines for effective infection control and in many cases we go beyond these guidelines.
• We have hand sanitizer that we will ask you to use when you enter the office. You will also find some in the reception area and other places throughout the office for you to use as needed.
• Air purifying machines have been implemented to help alleviate airborne pathogens.
• Improved suction equipment to cut the amount of aerosol created during dental treatment.
• A fogging machine with an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) approved solution that is completely safe to patients and staff that kills viruses, including Covid-19 (Corona Virus), after just 15 seconds of the fog contacting a surface.
• One time use gowns will be donned by your treatment team as well as masks, shields and gloves.
• A pre-treatment rinse will be offered. Anyone with a shellfish allergy should notify us before using.

We look forward to seeing you again and are happy to answer any questions you may have about the steps we take to keep you, and every patient, safe in our practice. To make an appointment, please call our office at (650) 756-0938. We are expecting a high volume of calls so please keep this in mind and bear with us during this initial process of reopening.

Thank you for being our patient. We value your trust and loyalty and look forward to welcoming back our patients, neighbors and friends.

Sincerely,

Dr. Paul Belluomini, Dr. Stephen West, Dr. Hung Pham,
and Our Dental Staff