The mission for our dental practice is to create an environment that offers patients the most complete as well as the highest quality dental care in one location. We are a dental center that assumes all the responsibility for your treatment. As a dental group we make ourselves aware of all your dental needs and integrate your dental care…. your goals… and your budget. We are sensitive to the problems present in your lives. It is not just a tooth or a few teeth that are our concern; it is the reality of improving and maintaining your oral health as well as making your smile the best it can be.
We provide our patients with ADA recognized “experts” (specialists) for each dental treatment. As a practice we will keep you informed about the status of your dental condition and we will perform the right therapy to correct all of your dental problems. Our staff is also aware of the financial as well as the time constraints that our patients may have. We will show you that we understand both the clinical as well as your personal aspects of dental treatment.
Dentistry is closer than ever to being a branch of medicine. We understand the relationship of medicines you might be taking and other health conditions that affect the oral cavity. We know how your medical health affects your oral health and we know how your oral disease can affect your medical health. A really great smile should be the billboard that says I am also dental healthy!
Why did we create a new “The Dentists Collaborative”?
When we started to construct our new location in North Andover in the late 1990's, we were taken by dental equipment suppliers to see their recently constructed “modern” dental offices. They were new, but the only thing modern and different was the decoration and the furniture. These offices were merely updated versions of my first practice in Andover, MA designed in 1971. Clearly, the lack of advanced equipment and the inadequate designs didn’t take into consideration total health care or patient safety.
This unacceptable situation was stunningly obvious to me. As a result, I embarked on my own tour of dental offices. I traveled to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Miami, New York, and Philadelphia. I read journals on modern offices and looked them up on the Internet. I was shocked how the “new” was quite old. The designs were new, yet with old concepts.
I next went to look at new medical facilities, and found they these offices were indeed modern and had updated technology to treat patients. They had medical-grade flooring, clean operatory walls, sterile water, and medical grade air (both from the heating/air conditioning system and from the air compressors that run their equipment). The equipment for patient treatment was usually the latest and most advanced in its field of use. There was no question that dental treatment, dental facilities and dental equipment had to be as modern and beneficial to our patients as it is in the medical community, because we are part of the medical community.
More Like A Dental Hospital
We now had a starting point for our new facility. Subsequently, we designed a small “dental hospital”. Our dental office now incorporates the advances that are part of most new hospital facilities. This means that a lot of our equipment is from medical supply companies and not dental companies.
We are fully computerized to ensure efficiency in scheduling and accuracy in treatment diagnosis. We have digital x-rays that reduce radiation to our patients by 90%. Our advanced electric hand-pieces — drills — have better torque, less vibration and speed controls which mean less pain and less heat to you the patient, The advanced phone system allows us to respond to front desk queries without having to touch (cross contaminate) the phones. We made our operatories larger and more user friendly for handicapped patients and for any possible office emergencies. Even the lighting that we use in the operatories is set to daylight. It keeps us more alert and offers us better lighting to match tooth colors.
During my travels to the “new modern” offices in various parts of the country, I was amazed how many offices did not do much to ensure the safety of patients. For the protection of our patients, we only use disposable products or heat-sterilized equipment and supplies. Our sterilization center is well lit, has sterile de-ionized water, and contains four (4) medical grade sterilizers. We are aware that these devices breakdown and we want to be able to guarantee that you will always be getting properly sterilized instruments. Many of the practices I visited had only a single sterilization unit.
After spending time and money on the necessary equipment and design of our new office, the next step was to choose a dental staff. We contacted friends at area dental schools, people we had served on committees with and researchers known to us in the Boston area. We were fortunate; we attracted great people to join our collaborative. They were professors at area schools, directors of programs, researchers, and teachers in hospital residency programs and staff doctors at major teaching hospitals. All had seen what we were creating and they were excited. Most of the staff has been with us since we opened in 1998.
