Baton Rouge dental practices, like others nationally, are running short on personal protective equipment in a field where the danger of coronavirus transmission is high.
Though ready to get back to work, local dentists have, for the past few months, been asking questions about reopening, knowing that providing health care in the age of COVID-19 won’t be easy. Now, their most pressing concern is securing the basics, including N95 and KN95 respirators, high-grade surgical masks, gowns and face shields.
When Dr. Steven Brooksher was forced to shut down his South Acadian Thruway dental office in mid-March, he donated all of his existing PPE to local hospitals. By the time his business was allowed to reopen, it initially couldn’t obtain enough PPE to operate.
“All our traditional suppliers had been requisitioned to hospitals, so now we have to use nontraditional sources to find the same things,” says Brooksher, whose practice reopened two weeks ago. “We still have to search for them.”
Brooksher has been able to get some masks from an air conditioning supply company in New Orleans, while his wife has also sewn face shields and gowns for workers to wear in the office. But that’s just one piece of the puzzle. While necessary, Brooksher says the new workflows he’s put in place—such as reducing the number of patients he sees over the course of a day and sterilizing rooms in between patients—ultimately slow operations. His dental hygiene services alone are losing an estimated $1,000 a week in revenue.
Dentists weren’t considered front-line workers when the pandemic began and were limited to just emergency patient services. Many offices nationwide donated their PPE to hospitals as Brooksher did, contributing to the shortage they’re now experiencing, The Wall Street Journal reports.
In an American Dental Association poll from mid-May of 6,504 dentists, 53.2% of those whose practices were closed said they were unable to reopen because they lacked an adequate supply of PPE.
The Baton Rouge Area Chamber recently established the PPE Marketplace in direct response to similar concerns being voiced by local business owners from a variety of industries, says Kelly Bienn, BRAC’s senior vice president of marketing.
“The marketplace is constantly being restocked and new items are being added regularly in response to business needs,” Bienn says. “If there is specific PPE [dentists] are looking for that isn’t in the marketplace already, we could work on trying to source it.”
Meanwhile, around one-quarter of ADA survey respondents said they were concerned about transmission of COVID-19 to their dental team—a viable fear, as dental workers spend a lot of time within 12 to 18 inches of a patient’s face, exercising procedures that create splatter and aerosols.
Still, national health experts say it’s safe for patients to visit the dentist, as long as proper precautions are taken.
“Because it’s all new circumstances, we’re finding that there are more questions than there are answers,” Brooksher says.
