KC area dentists cancel all patients except emergencies, still fear getting COVID-19
Pediatric dentist Jill Jenkins won’t see any of her young patients for a while, unless they come to her for a painful emergency.
Jennifer McAroy is ready to sleep in the basement of her Village Dentist practice to protect her family should she be exposed to a patient with the coronavirus.
And dentist Joseph Formanek, who has the same concern, is staying away from most of his family for the time being.
The coronavirus has knocked the wind out of the dental industry.
On March 16, recognizing the “unprecedented and extraordinary” circumstances facing the health care industry, the American Dental Association recommended that dentists postpone elective procedures for three weeks.
The move was designed to help slow the spread of the virus, free up masks and gloves and other protective equipment that hospitals need right now, and to keep people with dental emergencies out of ERs that are facing a possible onslaught.
Here’s what it wrought: Some dental offices have closed entirely, others are working with skeleton crews and some of the dentists still working worry they might catch the virus and, in turn, expose their families.
“I have never seen anything like this,” said Formanek at Aspen Dental in Lee’s Summit, which is only taking emergency patients now. “I know a lot of the offices have shut down. We’re going to try and ride this out.”
The Village Dentist in Prairie Village sent emails and texts and made dozens of phone calls to patients last week explaining that routine procedures, like teeth cleaning, are postponed. “I was calling patients myself to let them know what was going on,” McAroy said.
For the most part, she said, “they understood and the majority of them said when you tell us it’s safe to come back we will be back. I only had one person yell at me.”
“It’s kind of hit dentists pretty hard because all dental offices have been shut down for normal treatment,” said Jenkins, who is the vice president of the Kansas Dental Association.
“A lot of dentists have had to lay off employees. Almost all of my colleagues have had to go through this. We are less than 20 percent right now.”
Last Wednesday, when Jenkins closed her office to everything but emergency patients, she also laid off 103 employees at five locations across the metro.
“It’s kind of heartbreaking. I never thought in this profession I’d have to — sorry, this just gets me in the feels — lay off people, and they are family,” Jenkins said.. “To do that in the dental field, it’s unheard of.
“We’re trying to keep in contact with all of our families and trying do to everything we can to make sure they have a viable practice to come back to when all of this is over and settled down.”
Only if it’s an emergency
“If you’re in pain, have a broken tooth, or an abscess, please call or text us,” said the letter that went out to patients of Corporate Lakes Dental in Overland Park.
The School of Dentistry at the University of Missouri-Kansas City has done the same: All elective dental care is suspended in its clinics until further notice.
The licensed dentists on the faculty will handle the emergencies — including injuries to the mouth, swelling of the face or mouth, and pain that can’t be controlled by over-the-counter meds — since the dental students are taking classes online only.
“We want to cut down on contacts, both in the waiting rooms and frankly with dental staff and dental personnel,” said Kevin Robertson, executive director of the Kansas Dental Association, which has about 1,200 members.
“And, if dental offices are working and they are treating patients for non-essential or non-emergency procedures, they’re using up that personal protective equipment that we hear in the national news there’s a shortage of. So we want to cut down on how much of that is being used in dental offices.”
The virus has also forced hospitals to curtail elective surgeries to keep beds and staff available for COVID-19 patients.
“Just because there’s a pandemic, toothaches don’t stop,” said Formanek. “So where that person would normally go to the hospital and take up a bed, we can alleviate that stress off the hospitals.”
The state dental association advised its members to suspend everything but emergencies until the end of this week, said Robertson. At that point, the group will take its cues from the state health department, he said.
‘An air mattress in the basement’
Formanek’s dental offices stopped doing regular hygiene work last week. The Lee’s Summit office, typically run by 10 people, is down to the person at the front desk, one dental assistant, and the dentist. Other staff members have been furloughed, Formanek said.
McAroy in Prairie Village is also down to a skeleton crew since switching to emergencies-only last week. At this point, appointments scheduled for mid-April might get canceled, too, she said.
Both worry about getting the virus as they continue to work, but they’re still going into the office to handle emergencies.
McAroy said she doesn’t have N95 masks like the ones hospitals are scrambling for to keep their workers safe, and she’s not sure the masks she usually wears would protect should she work on an infected patient.
“I’m prepared to have an air mattress in the basement of my office so that I don’t subject anybody to me,” she said. “This is real. I’m scouring the internet trying to find masks so that I can possibly have the staff that has to stay with me safe.”
Formanek said he doesn’t see any way of getting through the crisis without dentists stepping up. He and his wife, who is also a dentist, have a 2-year-old daughter he won’t even touch after a day at work before he showers.
“We literally limit the contact with everybody else because of the position we’ve been put in,” he said. “I don’t see family at all. I don’t really hang out with anyone because I don’t want to get them ... I’m the mostly likely candidate to get it.
“But I don’t see a way around it because otherwise you’re going to flood the (hospital) beds with people with toothaches.”
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