It goes without saying that the last few weeks (at least) have been a challenge for many, many people and their families, and their friends, and also companies trying to do the best for their employees, their customers (or patients, in cases like ours), and their communities both large and small. Our team, like many others, is following the news and social media – both to understand the challenges at hand as this pandemic evolves and understand how others are reacting and what they’re choosing to do. Our guiding principle has been to keep our Plum Family – our staff, our doctors, and our patients – safe and healthy.

That said, it will come as no surprise to anyone that we followed the recommendations to close our dental practices, first with the hopes to reopen in two weeks, then three. We canceled and rescheduled doctors’ and hygiene appointments for our patients. It wasn’t something we wanted to do, but it was something we needed to do. And right now is very much about doing what’s needed and what’s right, versus what’s wanted. That’s why we’re also still seeing emergency patients on a case by case basis – the need to keep our dental patients out of the medical system is great. With the exception of those emergencies, we’ll be closed until this chaos is behind us. Because that’s right too.

We’ve all had to make some hard decisions.

But there are some easy decisions too. One that felt right and easy was when we decided we needed a way to stay connected to all of our employees in our 17 practices. We’re a close-knit group by nature, but to come out better from something like this, we knew we’d need to be closer than ever (even when self-isolating from home). So, while we’re all individually practicing physical distancing, we’re also socially connecting. We’re emailing all of our doctors, clinical & front desk team members & the Plum support team daily with an update. We call it “Today’s Update” and we share positive stories and ideas, images and memes, virtual concerts and other events, homeschooling and kid tips, and more. We update folks with Plum news, as well as local and national news as often as needed, and the rest we like to think of as #PlumPositivity. We’ve also taken to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/plumdentalgroup to post excerpts from these emails daily. The response to our communications has been really positive and warm – something we could all use a bit more of right about now.