Disclaimer for Virtual Services
Gentle Dentistry will be using Microsoft Teams remote communication technology to conduct a problem-focused evaluation virtually, to help manage your oral health problem and to determine whether you have a condition that requires immediate in-office treatment.
As always, our office takes dental records confidentiality very seriously and will do whatever we can under the circumstances to protect the information you send us. While we believe the risk to such confidentiality is not high, it may be greater than it would be if these remote communications were encrypted. The government has relaxed this HIPAA requirement during the nationwide COVID-19 public health emergency.
Certain major dental plans have announced that they will reimburse dental offices for conducting such remote evaluations, and we will submit claims accordingly.
Our dental office is using one of the permitted modalities (Microsoft Teams) for the remote transmission of information to conduct limited, problem-focused evaluations. While entirely adequate in the vast majority of cases for such limited purposes, these evaluations during virtual appointments may not reveal conditions that would be discovered during an office visit.