Dental Associates Blog

Our Experts. Your Oral Health

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Oct 31
9 Tips for Keeping Teeth Healthy around Halloween

It’s Halloween and candy is everywhere! There are a lot of scary things about Halloween...but cavities don’t have to be one of them! Odds are, if your child is going trick-or-treating this year they will return with a lot of treats that are not good for their teeth. They can still participate in the fun of dressing up and going door-to-door, but there are a few small things you can do to minimize the risk of all that candy harming your kids’ teeth. Here are a few simple tips that can make a huge impact! Use moderation. Encourage your child to eat fun-sized candies instead of a full candy bar. The smaller portions have just as much flavor but a fraction of the sugars and calories. Drink water. Besides having positive overall health benefits, water is great for your teeth and mouth too! Drinking water helps rinse away sugar that would otherwise cling to teeth. It also balances out the pH levels in your mouth that sugar makes unbalanced. Limit candy consumption. Try to refrain from letting your child eat their Halloween candy throughout the day. Instead, have them eat a few pieces with lunch or dinner. Avoid sticky or chewy candy. Candies that are especially sticky such as gummy bears, caramels, and taffy get stuck on your teeth and are difficult to remove even with regular brushing and flossing. Try to avoid these candies, as they can remain on the teeth for prolonged periods of time and cause tooth decay more rapidly. Steer clear of anything sour. The acid in sour candies is extremely harmful to tooth enamel and causes it to breakdown quickly. Chew sugar-free gum. Chewing sugar-free gum helps to increase saliva flow, which helps to wash away acids and bacteria present after eating candy. Gum containing xylitol is especially effective because xylitol actively blocks the production of decay-causing acid on the teeth. Learn more about the benefits of xylitol. Avoid candies that last. Hard candy and lollipops take a long time to dissolve and stay in your child’s mouth for an extended period of time. This leaves plenty of time for teeth to get coated in sugar and for bacteria to start to turn that sugar into acid. Brush teeth soon after eating candy. As always, brushing teeth is the best way to keep them cavity-free. Have your child brush their teeth as soon after eating candy as possible to remove the harmful bacteria. Encourage your kids to participate in Halloween candy buyback programs! Some communities host candy buyback programs where children can exchange their candy for a monetary reward. Search for a buyback near you: Halloween Candy Buyback. With these tips in mind, your family is ready to have a great Halloween!

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Oct 25
Dental Associates Presents at Press Ganey National Client Conference

As consumers and industries change, organizations must adapt to meet the demands of the marketplace. Our success at Dental Associates is driven by providing patients superior care, and evolving to meet their changing needs. The 2016 Press Ganey National Client Conference For the second consecutive year, I have been invited to speak at Press Ganey’s National Client Conference. Press Ganey is the recognized leader in patient satisfaction in health care and is used by many of the nation’s top health care organizations. We’re honored to share our knowledge about patient satisfaction alongside prominent groups such as Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic, and will benefit from this opportunity to learn from leaders in the health care industry. In our session this year, titled “Using Our Patients’ Voice: Restructuring Our Practice Model to Improve the Patient Experience,” my colleague Christina Villarreal, Patient Experience Specialist, and I will dig deeper into the process we’ve gone through to assure our patients’ expectations are being met by better educating staff on our patients’ wants and needs. Our session takes place on Wednesday, November 2 at 4 p.m. We’re honored to present at this highly-regarded conference and look forward to sharing our successes with other leaders in the health care industry. Dental Associates’ Journey to Constantly Improve Patient Care Since our first clinic opened in 1974, Dental Associates has continued to improve its care delivery model using the patients’ comments as a guide. We were built on the idea of family: our founder, Dr. John Gonis, wanted to make his first clinic a family-friendly experience, and today Dr. Tom Manos, his nephew, continues that vision since he took over the company as owner eight years ago. Over the past ten years, we’ve made significant changes to our business model. We are no longer a Dental Health Maintenance Organization (DHMO), a model where patients see a different dentist at each visit. Now we have established a dental practice within a practice where the patients see the same dentist, hygienist, assistant, and patient care coordinators at each visit. This change in was driven by our patients’ feedback, and in the end, it helps our patients to have the most personalized, coordinated care possible. Our mission was to listen to the patients’ voice and we did this by engaging Press Ganey patient surveys where are patients are able to rate our care and provide comments on how we doing and how we can improve. To effectively monitor the patient experience, we created a Patient Experience Specialist to our team. Christina Villarreal’s responsibility is to read patients’ comments and implement improvements to the patient experience. In her role, Christina trains our clinical and management teams to be more responsive in addressing the patients’ expectations. This has resulted in more of our doctors receiving higher ratings and higher mean scores from patients. You can learn more about our dentist reviews on our website. We will continue to make changes with one thing in mind: what is best for our patients. We know that our patients want to be treated with respect and receive the most caring, personalized dental care possible, so we vow to actively listen to their feedback and adjust accordingly.

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