One of my biggest frustrations in dealing with orthodontists on this topic is that many of them have somehow gotten the idea that, while fraud may be an epidemic in other corners of the dental profession, orthodontists are somehow immune.
My two decades of investigating embezzlement against general dentists and specialists has given me insight into the pathology of this type of fraud that is probably not possessed by anyone outside my company. Many of the people who lecture and write about fraud in dental offices are not full-time fraud investigators; they either make their living from speaking about fraud or offer a range of consulting services that includes fraud investigation but also many other services. My own company’s situation is a bit different; our raison d’etre is to investigate and remediate frauds committed against dentists. In this context we encounter hundreds of frauds annually.
I will confess that one of my biggest frustrations in dealing with orthodontists on this topic is that many of them have somehow gotten the idea that, while fraud may be an epidemic in other corners of the dental profession, orthodontists are somehow immune. Perhaps the best indication of the underappreciation of this problem is the fact that the last article on fraud in American Journal of Orthodontics & Dentofacial Orthopedics was published in 1996.
This feeling of immunity is not supported by what we see in the real world. For reasons I will explain a bit later in this article, fraud happens because a financially desperate or greedy employee has decided that the best solution to their money problems involves stealing from their employer. This can happen at ANY type of dental office. In fact, the “hyper-delegation” of duties to employees practiced by many orthodontists and the cash flow patterns in orthodontic practices tend to make them fairly easy places from which to steal. Furthermore, the large economic disparity between orthodontists and their employees makes stealing easy to rationalize. Statistically, we see no difference in the probability of your being a victim than any other type of dentist.
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