August 15, 2007

Ethics and Legalities in Dentistry - The Case of the Dentist Joker and the Assistant's Pigs

A really bizarre case has appeared in the legal literature. In this case a dentist performed surgery on one of his assistants who was also a patient. The assistant had a hobby or outside interest of caring for pot-bellied pigs. The surgery included the placement of temporary implants. As a practical joke, while the assistant/patient was under anesthetic, the dentist placed temporary implants of boars teeth, took photos, and then removed the boars teeth and continued with placing the actual temporary implants.

As you might have guessed, when the assistant saw the photos, she did not find it at all funny, which was the beginning of the legal cases. The dentist expected that his insurance company would cover him when he was sued, however they declined. He settled out of court with the assistant, but then sued his insurance company for not covering him. He won. He not only won, but he was granted the entire sum of money he paid the assistant plus three times that for mental distress.

This looks to be a very interesting case. More details and information are included in the following two FindLaw articles.

Scales, Adam. Can This Pig Fly? How A Dentist Assaulted A Patient And Made A Million Dollars: Part One in a Two-Part Series. Findlaw Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007.
http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/commentary/20070814_scales.html

Scales, Adam. Can This Pig Fly? How A Dentist Assaulted A Patient And Made A Million Dollars: Part Two of a Two-Part Series. Findlaw Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2007
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20070815_scales.html

Posted by pfa at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

June 13, 2006

Medical Identity Theft

The World Privacy Forum has released a report on the problem of medical identity theft.

Medical Identity Theft: The Information Crime that Can Kill You (Released May 3, 2006), by Pam Dixon and Robert Gellman:
http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/medicalidentitytheft.html

With financial identity theft, you find that someone has stolen your identity to make use of your financial resources and credit. With medical identity theft, this may happen -- the thief may use your insurance or other resources, and you may also find that the identity thief has changed your medical records to include fictitious information. Examples included changing the bloodtype on record and adding psychiatric diagnoses.

Recommendations for personal protection include frequently requesting copies of your files, just as you should request copies of your credit report, and closely reviewing all communications from your insurance company. Practitioners need to be aware of this in order to question apparent inconsistencies between the record and the patient's reporting.

Posted by pfa at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

May 17, 2006

Dental Ethics Resources

In light of the recent ethics scandal at UMDNJ, here is a small offering of selected resources on the topic of professional ethics in dentistry.

Posted by pfa at 01:27 PM | Comments (0)