We are pleased to announce that we will start to see patients from Monday 22 June 2020.

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.

The practice has always had a very high standard of cleanliness and continues to be a safe environment. We have been working tirelessly over the last 3 months to put even more stringent infection control measures into place and carry out risk assessments at every stage in order to ensure safe working practice.

We have suspended our new NHS patient registrations for the time being in order to prioritise appointments for our existing patients who have had dental emergencies or patients whose treatment was interrupted. We having been triaging patients during lockdown and will continue to telephone triage and offer advice in the first instance.  If a face to face consultation is necessary, we will offer you an appointment. Additionally, only pre-booked patients, who have been triaged, will be allowed in the practice therefore please do not attend the clinic unless you have an appointment.

You will see some changes when it is time for your next appointment. For example: to reduce the risk of spread of infection, we have placed hand sanitisers at the entrance, upgraded our PPE and redesigned the patient journey in line with social distancing. We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff. In additional to this:

We will be conducting pre-screening tests of patients which is likely to include taking your temperature on arrival.

• You will be required to fill in all relevant forms on your electronic device before you enter the practice from the comfort of your home. This means that you will not have to touch a pen, paper, or any electronic device other than your own when you attend your appointment. Failure to complete the forms prior to attending may result in your appointment being cancelled.
• We will book your appointment to ensure that the practice and waiting areas are not overcrowded. We will do this by leaving suitable gaps between appointments, making sure that you can attend the practice while maintaining a suitable distance from one another in accordance with government guidelines.
• Observe social distancing measures at all times and comply with staff requests.
• We will also be creating clinics for patients who are most vulnerable, to help minimize contact with others for this group whilst they are at the practice. Patients presenting with Covid-19 symptoms (possible or confirmed) will be referred to an Urgent Dental Care Centre until further notice.
• You will be asked to come on your own unless you are accompanying your child. Only the child and one parent will be admitted into the surgery. You will be asked to wait in your car or in a safe place outside of the practice until called in. We will notify you via your phone when you should enter the practice.
• We will ask that you pay using a contactless card or over the phone in advance. You will be contacted to book any follow up appointments by our receptionist.
• You must wear a mask when attending the practice unless it’s a child or if you are exempt on medical grounds.

Between all appointments as always, the dental team will thoroughly disinfect the dental surgery, reducing the risk of exposure to anything harmful while you are in our dental chair. This will have an impact on the number of appointments we will be able to offer initially but we endeavour to increase capacity in due course.

We will be in touch as soon as we ready to see you but in the meantime the entire team at Altmore Dental would like to thank you for your patience during this difficult time and look forward to seeing you again soon.

Best wishes

The Team at Altmore Dental Practice