Moving Forward With COVID-19

In the future and for all of you as such I can assure you that number one Shatkin F.I.R.S.T is very strong financially and otherwise to be here to support you through this pandemic and afterwards. Many of you have called asking questions about what I’m doing in my own dental practice. I will tell you that the state of New York is of course on a state of emergency. The governor has told dentists offices that they can only treat dental emergencies and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past couple weeks here in Buffalo. We also told all of our hygienists not to come in because we’re not doing hygiene treatment for the last two weeks. We are treating just strictly emergency situations and that’s pretty much I think the way it is throughout the country.

Now I encourage you to continue to treat your emergencies because we as dentists took an oath when we became dentists to treat our patients in good times and in bad times we have to be there for them and this is one of those times where we need to be there for them for a number of reasons. Number one we do not want dental patients overwhelming the hospital system. We don’t want them go into the emergency rooms with a toothache we want them to call you and myself so that we can treat those emergencies. If they have broken temporaries or broken dentures that are hurting them we need to be there to treat those emergencies and we should be. And they’ll continue to help bring a little bit of revenue your practice along with the fact that you’ll be taking care of your patients that you’re committed to for all these years. Too many dental offices are completely closing down and that’s causing a lot of stress on the hospital rooms and dental school emergency rooms please treat your own emergencies take care of those patients unless you’re one of those dentists who yourself are high risk individual.

If you’re over 70 if you’ve got medical problems or other ailments that prevent you from taking care of your patients, I totally understand. Stay home and stay healthy with your family make sure you wash your hands regularly use the hand sanitizers do everything that the CDC is recommending. Of course use the masks in the gowns and the face shields and everything that you should be using to protect yourselves and to protect your staff members. In my office we’re checking the temperature of every staff member in the morning, in the middle of the day, and in the afternoon. We’re also checking every single patients temperature as they sit in our chairs.

But I want you to know that Shatkin F.I.R.S.T is here and we will continue to be here to support you every step of the way. If you have any questions you can call us we remain open as an essential company in business here in New York State. We’re an essential business so we’re remaining open. Our lab is open, our supply store is open, and during this time we’re converting some of our business over to medical protective gear gowns, masks, goggles, shields, everything to do with that. And we’re also going to be distributing hand sanitizer in about ten days, we should have unlimited amounts of hand sanitizer available for you those are all some of the things we’re working on.

A Shatkin F.I.R.S.T addition many of you have seen my operating room that I have downstairs. It’s a brand new state-of-the-art facility that we built about a year ago and started working on in January of last year. We equipped that operating room with the most state-of-the-art air filtration purification system in the world. It’s made in Sweden by a company that is called opera GaN and Shatkin F.I.R.S.T has now become the U.S. exclusive distributor for dentists in the United States. I just read an article that the state of Pennsylvania is requiring a system like this in every dental office to prevent the spread of virus and viral and bacterial infections in dental offices. This is going to be happening in multiple states in the country Pennsylvania was the first that I know of so to learn more about our opera GaN system that we are distributing and selling please call one of our sales representatives and they’ll be happy to talk to you about it. It’s a brand new project that I’ve been working on for many months even before the corona virus hit but now that it’s here and we have to be prepared for these type of situations, and epidemics, and pandemics, in the future we’re going to be having these available for installation in your dental offices in your operatories. And we’re working on all that as we speak so I’m taking every opportunity here the time that I have off from my practice to help plan for the future for your practices, for my practices, for the safety and welfare of all of our patients, and for your future success.