May 1, 2020
We hope you and your family are well and in good health. Our community has been through a lot since March, and all of us are looking forward to resuming our normal habits and routines. As we transitioned from limiting our care from urgent and emergent situations in the spring to more comprehensive care, one thing has remained the same: our commitment to your safety.
Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice, and you may have seen this during your visits to our office. Our infection control processes are made so that when you receive care, it’s both safe and comfortable. We want to tell you about the infection control procedures we follow in our practice to keep our patients and staff safe.
Our office follows infection control recommendations made by the American Optometric Association (AOA), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). We follow the activities of these agencies so that we are up-to-date on any new rulings or guidance that may be issued.
You may see some changes when it is time for your next appointment. We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff. For example:
- We will ask you to stay in your car and call or text our office when you are parked, we will come out to you.
- If there are forms to update, we will bring them out to your car.
- Only the scheduled patient will be in the building during the exam, no guest, unless you are a parent of a small child or prior arrangements, have been made.
- We may take your temperature and ask COVID19 screening questions when you arrive at our office.
- We will ask that you wear a face mask into the office for the duration of your appointment.
- We have hand sanitizer that we will ask you to use when entering our office. You will also find some in the reception area and other places in the office for you to use as needed.
- We will deliver your glasses or contacts and even perform adjustments to your glasses curbside.
- You may see that our reception area will no longer offer magazines, coffee bar, children’s toys and so forth since those items can be difficult to thoroughly disinfect.
- Appointments will be managed to allow for social distancing between patients. That might mean that you are offered fewer options for scheduling your appointment.
- We will be disinfecting our frames using UVC technology, hypochlorous acid, and peroxide between patients, throughout the day.
- We will be disinfecting each exam lane, equipment, and high touch areas like doorknobs after every patient and throughout the day.
- We will do our best to reduce waiting times for you, we appreciate your patience as we continue to keep our practice safe for your visit.
We look forward to seeing you again, and we are happy to answer any questions you may have about the steps we are taking to keep you and our team members safe in our practice. We value your trust and loyalty, and we look forward to welcoming back our patients, neighbors, and friends.
-your friends at Vancouver Vision Clinic