Letter from MDA President: Re-Opening Webinar FAQ

Message from the MDA President:

Re-Opening Webinar FAQ

Dr. Brad Rand

__________________________________________________

May 21, 2020

Dear MDA Members,

I hope that this letter finds you all well and in your various stages of re-opening or preparing to re-open your practices. On Tuesday night, the Maine Dental Association held a webinar to review the Return to Work guidance from the American Dental Association and the MDA's Re-Opening Task Force.

Because these documents are being updated continuously, I am providing you the links so that you have the most current and up-to-date versions here:

ADA Return To Work Interim Guidance Toolkit

MDA Establishing Safe Dental Care in the Era of COVID-19

Note: If you have downloaded a copy of either guide, please recognize that information in being updated frequently so you should check back to make sure you have the most current version.

To that end, we are also sharing the slides from the May 19th webinar so that you have all of the references, links to resource materials and guidance documents that were discussed and will be able to keep track of updated information. You can access those slides here.

We have also compiled the questions from the Re-Opening Webinar and put them into a Frequently Asked Questions document that you can access here.

I also want to remind dentists of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services' COVID-19 Guidance for Health Care Providers document that was last updated on May 12, 2020. This document references that DHHS will reply upon the US CDC guidance for dental settings, along with ADA and MDA relevant guidance. The document also states that if updated CDC recommendations are not issued by May 18th, DHHS will defer to ADA/ MDA. Read more here.

The Maine Board of Dental Practice also issued a letter of guidance to dental professionals on May 15th regarding COVID-19 and the State's Plan to Restart Maine's Economy. You can find the letter on the board's website under Important Notices here: https://www.maine.gov/dental/

Finally, the ADA also has a number of terrific resources on their website including links to digital events and webinars including:

Aerosol and the Transmission of Coronavirus
How to Minimize Team Stress
ReOpening: It's As If Every Employee is a New Employee Now
Return to Work Interim Guidance Q&A

You can access the webinars here.

Yours in service,

Dr. Brad Rand

President

Maine Dental Association

P.O. Box 215

Manchester, ME 04351

(207) 622-7900