Reopening Your Office

As some areas are moving to reopen, the ADA has issued guidance on resuming your practice safely to help protect patients, staff and fellow dentists from COVID-19. The ADA has released an interim returning to work toolkit, which can be found here. For new CDC guidance for dental practices as of August 28, 2020, click here. For updated CDC infection control recommendations as of November 4, 2020, please click here. 

For a COVID-19 Practice Reopening Toolkit from the Montgomery County Medical Society, click here. Healthcare Infection Prevention and Control FAQs for COVID-19 from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, click here. CDC Guidance Framework for Resuming Non-COVID-19 Clinical Care During the Pandemic, click here.

When it becomes possible to open your practice the decision should be consistent with public health information and in collaboration with state and public health authorities. Please find some helpful tips from the ADA below:

  • Welcome back Reassurance Letter – the ADA recommends reassuring your patients of your office’s commitment to maintaining up-to-date infection control procedures. On page 2 of the toolkit referenced above, the ADA supplies you with a customizable letter that can be updated with your practice’s information.
  • Pre-Appointment Screening Process – before entering the practice, patients should be screened for potential COVID-19 exposure. Dentists may need to adapt the sample (contained in the toolkit on page 3) to fit their preferred method of communication – phone, video conference, text reminders and secure website – for collecting patient information prior to their office visit. Stress to patients that they might need to answer the questions on this form again when they arrive.
  • If suitable to your office design, you might consider having your patients wait in their car and you can call or text when they should enter the practice.
  • You might consider asking patient to bring their own pens to use – or supply them with a pen to take with them (do not share pens among patients).
  • If a patient needs to cancel due to illness, the ADA recommends you might want to consider waiving any last-minute cancellation fee policies that might exist.
  • In-Office Patient Registration Procedures – the ADA recommends that dental offices do the following when the patient arrives:
  • Have hand sanitizer available for use.
  • Check patient’s temperature (<100.4) with a touchless forehead thermometer.
  • Complete the pre-screening form again (as noted above).
  • Provide pen that the patient can keep.
  • Provide wipes to clean pens, clipboards, counters, phones, keyboards, light switches, surfaces and anything else that is touched.
  • Prepare Waiting Room Area – provide hand sanitizer station upon entry into the facility, with notice to all guests to use it before entering the office. Also, prepare the waiting room with the following:
  • Tissues, alcohol-based hand rub, soap at all sinks, trash cans.
  • Place chairs 6 feet apart, and when possible, use screens.
  • Remove all toys and reading materials.
  • On a regular schedule, remember to wipe all touchable surfaces with products that meet the EPA’s criteria for use against COVID-19. You can find that here.
  • Chairside Checklist – the checklist can be found on page 6 of the toolkit. However, please find some quick tips below:
  • Please find informed consent language to add to your current informed consent discussion below.

    • COVID-19 is an infectious virus that currently has no direct treatment and for which there is no current vaccine. While we have taken reasonable steps to limit the potential for transmission of COVID-19 in our office, you agree that you understand transmission of COVID-19 is still possible.

      By necessity, dentistry requires that our staff and health care providers be within 6 feet of you and will need to touch you and, potentially, your personal objects. You understand that person-to-person contact may increase the chance of COVID-19 transmission. It may be necessary that you quarantine and/or take other steps in the event it is determined that you may have been exposed to COVID-19.

      You further understand that recommendations and guidelines regarding COVID-19 are subject to modification.

  • Limit paperwork in the operatory as much as possible and cover keyboards with a disposable, clear, barrier.
  • Limit access to the operatory to the patient only. No guests and keep staff level in the operatory limited to the minimum required.
  • No hand-shaking or physical contact.
  • Wash hands and glove in room.
  • Review patient’s health history again for additional COVID screening.

For additional information opening your practice, go to the ADA’s Coronavirus (COVID-19) Center for Dentists found here.


COVID-19 Updates and Resources: