Southern Indiana Business July-August 2020 | Page 10

Team member Patricia Barefield works at her welding station at Cimtech Inc. in New Albany. Photo by Joe Ullrich
‘People Like It’
Patients are starting to return for
appointments at Denzinger Family Dentistry
in New Albany, but instead of waiting
in the waiting room, they’re hanging
out in the parking lot. Signs in the lot and
on the front door instruct patients to call
upon arrival, wait outside, and they’ll be
told when it’s OK to come inside. When
they do finally enter the building, they go
straight from their vehicles to the dentist’s
chair, and when they’re finished, they go
right back.
“Something we’ve discovered is that
people like it,” said Mike Rowe, general
manager at the practice. “They like to be
able to stay in their cars and look at their
phones or listen to the radio.” In fact, he
said, they like it so much that the practice
is considering keeping it as an option even
after it’s no longer required.
Inside the building, Dr. Sarah Denzinger-Rowe,
a founding dentist at the
practice, said they installed UVC germicidal
bulbs and electrostatic filters in
each of their seven HVAC filters so that
the air is constantly being filtered. “It’s
cool, I love telling patients about it,” she
said. “The fear factor has really affected
people, and we need to do whatever we
can to make them understand and know
that they’re in a safe environment.”
Denzinger-Rowe added that the
changes they made are good for the type
of virus that causes COVID-19. “I think
this is here to stay,” she said. “They make
us feel safe, our patients appreciate it.
They’re confident when they come in.”
A worried workforce
When Denzinger Family Dentistry
reopened, it was deliberate and slow. The
first week back, Rowe said, only doctors
and senior leadership were allowed in the
office, where they served as the guinea
pigs for ensuring their safety protocols
were viable. “We had doctors answering
phones, checking people out,” he
said. When they felt confident that the
measures they had taken were solid, they
allowed employees to return.
They also paid “outrageous” prices
for personal protective equipment (PPE),
including face shields and three different
kinds of approved masks, that would make
their staff feel confident enough to spend
an entire day in a closed-air environment.
Although Rowe said he encountered what
10 July / August 2020