Whats old has become new?

My dental office was designed by an architect in 1946 (before I was born). It has small treatment rooms and a large waiting area.  The operatories have doors or folding accordion doors to provide privacy. As time went by, this design fell out of favor among dentists. Open treatment areas became more popular and most offices have smaller waiting areas and more treatment rooms. This created "efficiencies" but did make for additional crowding.

Over the years I have toyed with the idea with adding additional treatment rooms to the three that I already have, but I never executed any of the plans I envisioned. One of the reasons, aside from the initial costs, was that it would add more staff and dentists to our facility which would have created more crowding and less privacy. My office houses an essentially "boutique" practice and  I liked the vibe our layout created and felt that additional treatment rooms might alter the mellow mood.

Now with our efforts to make our office safe, it turns out that I have the perfect layout and setup. We have no central air conditioning but instead utilize individual window units in rooms that don't circulate air to adjacent rooms since our rooms can be closed off by closing our doors. Our waiting room is large and easily adapted to allow patients to socially distancing. My receptionist/office manager sits behind an opening that we were easily able to protect with a fixed Plexiglas sneeze guard.

Of course my collegues in the building have for the most part  taken the steps needed to adapt their offices to the new CDC guidelines. My upstairs dental college has a tiny waiting area and he has placed seating, spaced six feet apart in the hallway for patients to wait for their appointments( Here in NYC, most dentists do not have parking lots than can be used for patients waiting).

Not all offices have adapted well. I went to a physician in my building and I showed up 10 minutes before my appointment time and they wouldn't let me in and asked me to come back at my appointment time (10 minutes later)...hmm, not very friendly but I guess that's there way of ensuring social distancing.

Right now I am really glad that I never changed the "inefficient" layout of my office. It works well for our new normal and each week I have been open ( we are in our fourth week now) our work flow and comfort levels seem to increase so by now my team seems to fully adapted to our new routines. I come in early ( to avoid the subway "rush hour" and turn on all our air purifiers and window air conditioners. Each day we have our temperature and O2 levels checked with a pulse oximeter and Ida records these measurement in a book. My assistant and hygienist apply surface disinfectants and then  fog our operatories between patients using  a ULV fogger and HOCL 200 ppm . Afterwards they close the door for 15 minutes and wait. This allows the mist and any residual moisture to disappear. At this point our treatment rooms are ready to be reused , if needed.

All patients are prescreened over the phone prior to their appointments and their temperature and O2 levels are checked when they first arrive. While this doesn't totally ensure they don't have an asymptomatic case of Covid 19, most of our patients are over 50 and have been pretty careful to take the steps they need to stay safe during the last several months. Most likely the percentage of our patients who might test positive is below .5%. Given that my assistant and I are both wearing faceshields and N95 masks, I believe our risk level is acceptable (under the circumstances) and we can safely provide dental care to our patients.



from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2020/07/whats-old-has-become-new.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/