More Dental Offices Reopening for Elective Procedures

[May 6] As of today, 22 states have changed their mandates, allowing dental offices to re-open for elective procedures with various stipulations. All eyes in our community are on these states (see the ADA’s interactive map), wondering how quickly patients will be willing to get back in the chair and how soon laboratory workloads will pick up.

Meanwhile, dental offices and labs alike are making fundamental changes to the way they operate with the ultimate goal of protecting themselves, their employees and patients. Dentists are instituting temperature and patient screenings, increasing engineering controls such as high-efficiency ventilation and ramping up staff training on hazards and precautions. In the lab, owners and managers are re-thinking pickup and delivery procedures, the risk of...