Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update

Dear Patient and Community: 

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. 

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. We do this to make sure that our infection control procedures are current and adhere to each agencies’ recommendations. 

We plan to begin seeing patients for their routine orthodontic adjustments and check-ups on Tuesday, May 19th, as stated by the Governor Inslee’s mandate (Proclamation 20-24, Restriction on Non-Urgent Medical Procedures until May 18th). We are currently only available for orthodontic emergency services. We have begun rescheduling patients on a first-cancelled-first-scheduled basis. We are working very hard to reschedule every single patient as soon as possible. Please do not worry about calling us to make an appointment as we will be reaching out to you to schedule. Please check your voicemail and email for our message in case you missed our call. Please make sure that your voicemail is not full; we experienced a few instances where we were unable to leave a message. 

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: 

- In order to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19, we request that you answer some screening questions. Please visit www.orthomarysville.com/covid19 to fill out a short survey right before your scheduled appointment. For the safety of our staff, other patients, and yourself, please be truthful and candid in your answers. 

- Please wear a facemask to your appointment. 

- Tooth-brushing stations will be used only as hand-washing stations unless requested by the doctor. Please brush your teeth at home before your scheduled 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. We request that only one family member accompanies the patient to the reception area. After checking in verbally at the reception area, we request that everyone wait in the car until the patient is finished with the appointment. Only patients will be allowed in the treatment area unless requested by the doctor. 

- 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 in the office for you to use as needed. 

- 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. 

- Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients. This means that you may be offered fewer options for scheduling your appointment. 

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. 

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. Robert and the Marysville Orthodontics Team