COVID-19

TEMPORARY PRACTICE CLOSURE & SUBSEQUENT RE-OPENING  

 28th May 2020 (pm) - Government confirmed face-to-face patient care can resume on 8th June 2020

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Dear patients and friends,

The Government has given the green light for the restoration of routine care services in England.

NHS England and the Chief Dental Officer have now confirmed that practices can provide face-to-face patient care from 8 June. With that in mind, we must exercise our professional judgement on the pace of change. We too only found out ourselves in the press release on Thursday 28th May.

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We welcome the news but the likelihood of us being able to open

properly on 8th June is highly unlikely. It is more likely that our resumption will be towards the end of June/beginning of July. There is a nationwide shortage of enhanced PPE, and we need to put in place

protocols for social distancing and appropriate cross-infection control.

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The practice is still waiting for deliveries, mask testing and staff training. This announcement was not planned by the dental profession. We didn't receive any prior notice or information and hence more planning will be needed before we can be properly operational.

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Please be patient. We will resume as quickly as we can with your safety in mind.

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1st June 2020 - England: Important advice to be published for dentists

All Dentists and their teams in England are working frantically this week to decide when they can open for face-to-face treatment and what care they are able to provide. We anticipate the publication of three important pieces of advice and guidance to help in that decision-making either today or at least, by Friday 5th.

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  Guidance from the Chief Dental Officer (and NHS England), including a new Standard Operating Procedure (SOP)

  
  

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  Implications of COVID-19 for the safe management of general dental practice: a practical guide from the Faculty of General Dental Practice

  
  

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  The BDA’s COVID-19 special guidance on returning to routine care

  
  

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These publications will be pivotal in allowing us to re-open safely.

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Thank you for your continued understanding.

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8th June 2020

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Currently, the practices main issue (amongst other weakness in our general supply chains) is that we are still waiting to receive supplies of Type II fluid resistant masks and  FFP2/FFP3 masks. Once we have received the PPE (and we have been promised by the powers that be that stock provision will be robust), we need to get the staff face fit trained and tested. 

With the cooperation of Health Education England and our Local Dental Committees, we have been told that once we have appropriate masks, all dental professionals in the Greater London Deanery will have access to face fit training and testing as a matter of urgency. Available dates and times for this are to be confirmed by the end of the week. Otherwise the practice continues to be made ready for resumption with social- distancing measures being put in place.

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22nd June 2020

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The practice has almost been prepared for the resumption of treatment. We have installed a number of cross- infection measures including 5 HEPA air filters and special equipment to mitigate the need for the 60 minute "fallow time" between patients. This equipment will ensure there is rapid air exchange within the treatment rooms. The COVID signage is almost complete as are the social distancing measures, such as the removal of all waiting room chairs. Wall furniture, magazines, posters and surfaces which cannot be disinfected have also been removed including the reception carpets and under-stairs room divider area.

Our main issue is the provision of enhanced PPE mask fit training and testing, which Health Education England is organising but finding hard to confirm dates and venues for the 11,500 dental professionals in Greater London!!

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26th June

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Based on the equipment installed/supplies received this week, we are planning to re-open on or before Wednesday 8th July. Our only issue is the need for training and fit testing of mask respirators to allow us to safely carry out Aerosol Generating procedures (AGP) such a high speed drilling, ultrasonic scaling, use of the air/water spray device and rinsing etc. Health Education England are organising training days next week and we should also receive a mask fit testing kit to test the staff by the end of next week. Despite that (in the event that mask training and testing isn't provided) we will initially be prioritising urgent and emergency care, such as extractions, which don't require AGP's. We will subsequently be in contact with patients who have non - urgent problems but require AGP's.

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27th June

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The mask fit test training for next week has not materialised but I have been advised that further dates will be announced imminently. Despite this we still intend to re-open the week after next on Friday 10th July rather than the 8th due to some staffing issues which have arisen recently. As mentioned previously we will initially be prioritising urgent and emergency NON-AGP cases until we have the legally required mask fit test training and testing for respirators.

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6th July 

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As mentioned in the previous update we have had some staffing issues and have lost our receptionist and our associate dentist. We are still scheduled to re-open this Friday 10th July. Our promised order/ delivery of a mask face test kit has again been put back 3 weeks to the end of July, so we will performing only non- aerosol procedures until the mask training and/or testing have been completed.

Once we have seen all the urgent and emergency cases, we will contact patients with other problems, also Plan patients and those who had appointments cancelled during the lockdown.

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17th July

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So, thankfully, the practice managed to acquire mask fit testing for the staff, the day before we opened on the 10th, allowing us to carry out aerosol procedures. We also have a confirmed booking for fit test TRAINING on Saturday 1st August. The practice would be legally accredited to self- test and use any available FFP2, FFP3 and half mask respirators, enabling us to continue performing AGP's. Thus, we completed our first full week after re-opening and are gradually working our way through the urgent and emergency cases and now contacting patients who had appointments cancelled during the lockdown. We would ask everyone to be patient. Due to all the cross infection protocols, social distancing, enhanced PPE requirements and mandatory fallow time following aerosol procedures, we are unable to treat more than 8-10 patients a day - whilst attempting to address a 3 month backlog of treatments. We can only trust that everybody will be understanding. This has been both a frustrating and stressful time for us all.

N.B - please see our current COVID opening hours near the bottom of our Home page.

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2nd November 2020

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We want to re-assure everybody that we will NOT be closing down on Thursday 5th November for the second national lockdown. We have everything in place to remain open. Apologies for taking so long to update the website. We have gradually worked through the "backlog" of urgent and emergency treatment since the closure between March 23rd and July 9th. We still have a waiting time of approximately 4-5 weeks for routine treatment. We hope to reduce this as the weeks pass. Please be patient.

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4th January 2021

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We just wanted to reassure everybody that we will remain open for treatment during this COVID tier 5 lockdown, just as we did during the second lockdown in November 2020.

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5th January 2021

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We currently have a fault on our practice phone line and calls are not registering at our end. It appears we are not picking up but our phone is not ringing. An engineer will be attending in the next 36 hours and we will keep you updated. Meanwhile, please email the practice and we will respond as soon as we can.

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7th January (PM)

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We just wanted everyone to know that the engineer appears to have fixed our faulty telephone line and we are fully operational again. A wire at the exchange up the road was bent and had finally perished in the bad weather!

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2nd March 2022

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Just wanted to update all our patients regarding COVID treatment restrictions at the practice. We are going to continue at present with the protocols we have followed for nearly 2 years. We will still be moving to a new room after every patient and wear high level PPE for all aerosol generating procedures. We have had a number of patients attend for appointments, who have subsequently contacted us within a few days to report they have tested positive for COVID 19. We are also still having patients cancelling at short notice having contracted the virus. Going forward we want to notify everybody that although over the last 2 years, we have absorbed all the increased costs of PPE, COVID measures, materials/stock and the effect of reduced treatment capacity at the practice, we are increasing our private PAYG fees from April 1st 2022. eg. examinations and cleaning/scaling.    

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25th August 2023

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FYI - We just wanted to clarify that we have not taken on any new patients since 2019. It is unlikely that this will change for some time. We also have a 'rule' in place where we do not re-accept patients who have not attended for 36 months. This obviously does not apply to patients who are currently subscribed to our practice plan.

Thank you all again for sticking with us. 

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The WDP team.

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