In celebration of Earth Day, we thought we would share some of the great features of our office that we don’t typically brag about!  When creating our new space, we tried very hard to use responsible design wherever possible.  Our office is a paperless office; we utilize a sophisticated dental software program that allows us the ability to maintain electronic patient records – all of our appointments, chart notes and billing are done this way.  When we do use paper, we are sure to utilize both sides of the page in order to conserve paper where we can!  Our practice also utilizes digital radiography (xrays).  This not only drastically minimizes the amount of radiation our young patients are exposed to, it also completely eliminates the need for hazardous chemicals and waste generated by traditional films requiring chemical processing.

The sterilization methods we use reflect our commitment to the highest degree of safety for our patients. In doing our part to eliminate additional chemical waste, we do not use cold sterilization methods which further reduces the need for chemical clearance.  While it originally took me some time originally to learn about our waterless vacuum system (which provides the power behind our beloved “Mr. Slurpy”!), it does eliminate the use of up to 12 gallons/minute of water waste that traditional vacuum systems utilize.  That’s amazing!!!  From our carpets to our lightbulbs, we really have tried to create a very warm and child friendly environment that will be a safe and fun place for our little patients to visit, as well as a dental home that does its best to help preserve our surroundings as much as possible.

One of our outstanding patients, Sophia H., created a pretty amazing website for her 4^th grade school project.  In celebration of Earth Day, we wanted to showcase her work.  For more information on conservation and tips/tricks on how to better care for our surroundings, take a peek at sophieisgreen.com!  At such a young age, Sophie is one responsible and focused young lady!

While I know that in honor of Earth Day, especially, I need to cherish the rain that our state has needed so desperately….my family is ready for some sunshine!  Hope you are all having a wonderful springJ!

Our second annual gingerbread house contest has come to a close and the results are in.  For those that didn’t get to visit the office, we are sharing the pictures of all the fun houses that decorated our office during the holiday season.  We had 14 offices take part, each armed with one gingerbread house kit, their team and all of the creativity they could come up with!  Our patients made for some hard judges…often going up and down the hall multiple times to ensure their vote was not cast incorrectly.  We are proud to say that throughout the 3 and a half weeks of display, we lost only one gumdrop !  Yay!

We had a first place tie:  Dr. Rimi Kobayashi and San Ramon Primary Care.  Congratulations!  We had lunch delivered to our award winners and breakfast bagels platters to all of our wonderful contributors.  We are posting pictures of all of the houses – so for those of you with a competitive edge, you can get ready for next year!

Dr. Rimi Kobayashi's house

San Ramon Primary Care

Dr. Diana Rose's officeDr. Jarvis's office

Dr. Nash and his son, Adam

Dr. Lee Porteous's office

Dr. Koehler's office

Dr. Saidi's office

Dr. Adam's office

Dr. Hakim's office

Dr. Bigman's office

Thank you, again, for participating in our contest!  While it is many, many months away, we look forward to doing this again!

As far as New Year’s resolutions go, ours is to begin utilizing our blog!  We hope that it will be a great way for us to keep in touch with all of our wonderful patients and their families.  Our goal is to not only share information about our practice, but to share a lot of the fun we have throughout the day.  Kids really do say the funniest things and we hope to highlight some of the funnier moments as well as to share some of the amazing activities our patients are taking part in!

We wish you a wonderful new year, full of hugs and kisses, love and laughter….and, well, it wouldn’t be a dental blog if I didn’t mention toothbrushing and flossing, would it!?

Dr. Ozzie:)

We are proud to announce we have launched our brand new website!

Tune into our blog for future updates about our practice and our involvement  in the community!