COVID-19 Information – Schoharie, NY

Dear Patients, Neighbors, and Friends

We hope this letter finds you and your family in good health. Our community has been through a lot over the last few years, 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.

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 with your confirmation text message.
• The CDC still highly recommends dental offices to continue wearing face coverings for patients, visitors and staff. This will only be optional when transmission cases are low.
• We have hand sanitizer and/or soap to wash your hands that we will ask you to use when you enter the office.
• 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.
• For aerosols our HVAC system doesn’t circulate the air, instead, it brings in fresh air. We also placed air purifiers with multiple filters and UV lights that turns over the air up to 6 times per hour in each operatory.

We look forward to seeing you 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 518-702-4145.

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. Hazem Elbialy and your Schoharie Dental Team.