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The ADA is an Incredible Dinosaur
By Darrell K. Pruitt; DDS
As a member of the ADA, I am also a part owner in any business venture the leaders of the organization enter into. I’ve observed the loss of my investment in a business deal because my employees made mistakes. As a business owner, it would be simply irresponsible for me to ignore something like this.
The Embarrassing Story
Do you know what part is missing from this embarrassing story? The ADA has not uttered a word about the ADA/IDM failure… Or, as the ADA Business Enterprise Inc. leaders call it – the ”ADA/idm” failure.
The fact that the two business entities never came to an agreement on what to even call their doomed joint venture reveals a lot about the egos that gummed up the machinery. It’s possible that pride undermined our non-profit/for-profit partnership from the very start. We just don’t know what happened because there are so many possible reasons for this business model to fail. Will loss of ADA members’ investment happen again if the cause is not recognized and eliminated? I think the chances are pretty good that even more embarrassment is on the way. Given the soft environment, it’s only natural.
Over my 27 year career as a dentist, I have met many ADA officials, both employed and elected, on all three levels of the tripartite system of governance – local, state and national. From the topmost quality of character I have witnessed in all but a few politically-empowered and proudly insensitive exceptions, I can assure you that like all major projects of the ADA, the failed ADA/IDM adventure into dental marketing was assembled with nothing but noble intentions and benevolent wishes for ADA members and dental patients – at least from the ADA side. Whether the leaders of the ADA’s new business partner, Intelligent Dental Marketing out of Utah, were dedicated to serving ADA members in a captive market is unlikely. The ADA/IDM business model is sort of like managed care dentistry. When dentists sign contracts that provide them with clients regardless of how they are treated, there is a natural tendency for dentists to become unappreciative of those who pay their bills.
Little Consumer Competition
The ADA allows Americans to experience what socialism is like in markets where there is no competition for consumers: Professionals such as dentists stop trying to please their patients, and IDM stops trying to please dentists. If IDM was a decent company before the business venture with ADA membership, the ADA ruined them with a sweetheart deal that included protecting them from competition, as well as shielding them from complaints by angry ADA members. And like dental patients with preferred provider lists, ADA members noticed the bad treatment. However, complaints were never made transparent even as more ADA members where signing contracts with ADA/IDM. That is unfair and unethical.
Just Google for Complaints
Want to see what an embarrassment in situ looks like? Just Google “CareCredit complaints.” ADA-approved CareCredit/GE has a long history of sweetheart deals like the one they made with ADA leaders. Their trail is always marked by complaints. The ADABEI is selling ADA members’ reputations. I just read ADA reporter James Berry’s article highlighting outgoing ADA President Dr. John S. Findley’s address to the House of Delegates that he gave on Friday. The article is titled, “We built our home on a foundation of science and values: Dr. Findley”
http://www.ada.org/prof/resources/pubs/adanews/adanewsarticle.asp?articleid=3771
One free-standing paragraph in the article caught my attention that perhaps exposes a symptom of the pride and secrecy that surrounds the ADA/IDM disaster. In the middle of the article, James Berry offers this cryptic message that was obviously not meant for all members to understand:
“On the Association itself, the president noted that the ADA has undergone significant change in the past year and a half. As problems were discovered and defined, he said, the leadership acted to resolve them.”
Was the ADA/IDM fiasco one of the problems that was resolved? Did they resolve the problem with CareCredit/GE causing ADA members to be covered by the Red Flags Rule – and not letting members know about it? Did they resolve the problem of data breaches and how they can mean certain bankruptcy for ADA members, even if the members do the right thing?
Possibly
We just don’t know which problems were resolved, but somehow we should feel much better, now that President Findley got the message out to mid-level ADA leaders who probably know exactly what he is referring to. And, by protecting lower caste members from knowing things they don’t need to know, problems are quietly resolved and the profession’s image is preserved. “Image is everything” – ADA/IDM business slogan.
“Findley for the future”- Dr. John S. Findley’s campaign slogan.
Bingo! We have a match.
We should not forget that before IDM leaders got in way over their heads and started doing foolish things like marketing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) talents they lacked, there has not been a dues increase for a couple of years – in part because of the profits that were churned from ADA/IDM purchases ADA members made. I am certain that the ADA Business Enterprise Inc’s failure breaks the hearts of sincere and devoted leaders in the ADA who would have never recommended going outside the ADA’s Mission Statement had ADA employees been transparent with them. The officials of IDM couldn’t care less. Their part of the venture is much easier to dissolve for the Utah businessmen. They just picked up and walked away. However, the ADA officials have a fiduciary responsibility to members who trusted them. Once again, virtually all of the ADA leaders are just like you and me. Some just got in too deep on our behalf and couldn’t shut the mistake down before members got needlessly hurt.
Officials in other businesses the size of the ADA are held accountable for their mistakes and are not afforded the opportunity to filter communications with the owners because of image concerns. This kind of sweetheart deal for business executives, most of who come from Delta Dental, UnitedHealthcare or both, as in the case of the new executive director, Dr. Kathleen T. O’Loughlan, occurs only in the ADA and to a lesser extent in the US government and dental insurance industry.
Assessment
The state of the ADA is not nearly as rosy as Dr. Findley would have us believe. I think we have all seen authoritarian leaders re-write history. The ADA is an incredible dinosaur.Business can be ugly in the highly competitive land of the free. If businesses don’t take risks, we cannot move forward. For that reason, mistakes are expected. But never forget. Owners expect to be told about them.
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Filed under: Career Development, Ethics, Managed Care, Marketing & Advertising, Op-Editorials, Practice Management, Pruitt's Platform | Tagged: ADA, ADA/IDM, ADABEI, CareCredit, Darrell Pruitt, DDS, delta dental, DMD, doctoroogle.com, Dr. John S. Findley, Dr. Kathleen T. O’Loughlan, IDM, Intelligent Dental Marketing, James Berry, UnitedHealthcare |
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Darrell,
Great post. It is a joy to read your contributions … always something unique and personal.
Monty
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Thanks, Monty. You made my day.
Darrell
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ADA/IDM – Dr. Robert A. Faiella’s baby
The non-profit ADA venture into dental marketing with for-profit Intelligent Dental Marketing out of Utah predictably failed this spring. Over a year ago, I warned ADA Trustee Dr. Robert Faiella, who heads the ADA Business Enterprise Inc. that ADA/IDM was oh such a lame business model from the start. Unfortunately for ADA members whose dues are tied up in this mess, ADA officials don’t listen to troublemakers once they have been properly identified by authorities.
Until command and control became impossible in the ADA, troublemakers like me were instructed to politely take our complaints to our ADA-designated representatives – starting at the society level. The committee-reasoning is, if a complaint has merit, it will be recognized and will naturally rise up the chain of command in a controlled manner if it is also presented professionally.
If the state representative on the society level determines after a couple of minutes that the complaint is not worth pursuing, or if it is otherwise presented in an unprofessional manner, then the issue can be justifiably ignored. If the troublemaker shows no respect for the designated authority’s opinion, and proceeds to pursue an issue without society-level and state-level support, ultimately the dentist will be blocked by a very high ADA official who will advise, “write a letter to the editor of the JADA,” as ADA Senior Vice-President Dr. John R. Luther finally suggested to me.
Bite me.
Until this month, Dr. Faiella refused to respond to my questions because of common good ol’ boy orneriness. Now he refuses to respond to me because he, his ADABEI and my ADA have been named in a lawsuit for stealing ideas from Dental WebSmith and selling them to ADA members.
Click to access 09cv6198.pdf
“Image is everything” was Dr. Faiella’s slogan for the proud ADA/IDM team.
Way to go, Faiella. Regardless of whether the lawsuit is warranted or not, the ADA’s professional image is only as good as yours, Dude.
D. Kellus Pruitt; DDS
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An anonymous letter about a troubled ADA
I received an anonymous letter today that was mailed from Ft. Myers, Florida on March 29 at 2010 PM according to the postmark.
“Ron claims he silenced you! You are no longer asking embarrassing questions because he backed you down! [and just when you were causing some apprehension!] We do not like embarrassing questions!
Focus on two items: audits – more bad news! ADABEI and Foundation!
What is the president hiding? Are both ED and president whitewashing the incidents? ED’s secret letter to the Board of January 1 is interesting. Do you have it? Ask! ED and Board have problems.
John Luther now gone from ADA. Quietly! We hardly noticed!!!! What’s going on? United Healthcare? Other 3rd party? This is touchy.
Want more? Ask if interested. I will see.
——————————–
“Ron” is Dr. Ron Tankersley, President of the ADA. A month or so back, I was regularly pestering him with questions about ADA policy as well as ethics, when on March 5, an article by Craig Palmer was posted in the ADA News Online titled, “ADA urges IOM to include practicing dentists” (link is no longer available).
On March 7, I described my pleasure with Dr. Tankersley’s fight for practicing dentists to have representation in national healthcare plans. It’s a Twitterpoem titled “You go, Dr. Ron Tankersley!” Its link is still available:
http://community.pennwelldentalgroup.com/forum/topics/you-go-dr-ron-tankersley
So when the anonymous author of the letter found it incredible that Ron would say that he made me back off, Anon would be wrong to question the ADA President’s power. When Ron did something I liked, I simply voiced my approval and then left him alone. That could change at any time though, now that you, Anon, revealed to me hints of audit problems with the ADABEI and Foundation – and suspected collusion between the President and the Executive Director. I felt uncomfortable with the statement about the officers because it has the potential to incur serious liability for anyone who repeats it as fact. In addition, if the accusation of malfeasance is wrong, the rumor could unfairly cause real harm to innocent people.
Like everything else in the anonymous letter, any inferred malfeasance is just a rumor. However, rumors about non-profit organizations supported by membership dues are better exposed than hidden.
Is this starting to smell a lot like Chicago politics to you?
The ADABEI that is mentioned is the non-profit organization’s for-profit branch – Business Enterprise Inc. I have publicly blamed that group for the ADAIDM disaster, as well as the ongoing problems with CareCredit/GE. Nothing would surprise me about that collection of wits.
“John Luther now gone from ADA. Quietly! We hardly noticed!!!! What’s going on? United Healthcare? Other 3rd party? This is touchy.”
Whoever the author is knows that I have had my differences with Dr. John Luther’s direction of the Department of Dental Informatics. I asked him long ago if he had any marketable skills and suggested that he should step down. So if what Anon says is true, I think that is a tremendous step towards fee-for-service dentistry and a step away from the National Association of Dental Plans. But remember. This is April 1st, not Christmas.
And if this is an elaborate April fool’s joke, it’s a damn good one. I’ll be interested to find out if Dr. Luther indeed lost his job. Anyone know any truth about that rumor?
D. Kellus Pruitt; DDS
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Dr. Raymond Gist – ADA President-elect
Do you know who Dr. Raymond Gist is? He is the ADA President-elect. Until I read Craig Palmer’s article “ADA testifies on oral health initiative” that was posted yesterday on ADANews Online, I hadn’t heard much from Dr. Gist. I was actually becoming a little worried about our future leadership just because he has been so quiet. The strategy of quiet – or the policy of leadership below the radar screen as Dr. Tankersley calls it – has proven to be completely ineffective in preventing stakeholders from trampling dentist-patient relationships. Dr. Gist gives me a warm feeling of hope, but then I have an extremely low threshold these days.
I still haven’t developed a solid opinion of our next ADA President because like all traditional leaders, information about who Dr. Raymond Gist is, and the principles he represents cannot be found on the Internet outside of committee-approved press releases. However, I like what he said on Wednesday at the Institute of Medicine “information gathering” meeting in defense of practicing dentists’ involvement in all discussions about the future of oral health care in the nation. Such common sense representation of dental patients’ interests hasn’t been seen in Washington since the late Congressman Dr. Charlie Norwood frustrated stakeholders in his own special way years ago – regularly – painfully.
Dr. Gist told the IOM, “When an agency does not have a clearly identified dental division, with a chief dental officer and a specific budget line, its dental program’s success or failure becomes a product of the administration in power,”
http://www.ada.org//news/3818.aspx
Dr. Gist continues: “The ADA believes that before the Department of Health and Human Services can take any action to improve oral health in America it must establish a strong dental presence in all of its agencies.”
I like what I’ve heard from Dr. Gist so far. I want to hear more. Lots more. As a matter of fact, I want to hear what Dr. Gist has to say about the ever more complicated and expensive duties dentists must assume to remain HIPAA compliant. I just now read an article titled “ADA Offers New Resource to Help Dentists Comply with Changes to HIPAA Rule” ($225 for ADA members and $337.50 for non-members).
http://community.pennwelldentalgroup.com/
Remaining HIPAA compliant looks even more tedious – and expensive – than the previous HIPAA Rule that dentists have casually ignored for years.
If Dr. Raymond Gist is the caliber of leader I hope he is, maybe transparency still has a chance in the ADA after all. If it’s not Gist, maybe it will be the next president-elect. Or maybe the next…
D. Kellus Pruitt; DDS
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Darrell,
Please make your case — once — and then move on.
Thank you.
Steve
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Thanks for your frank comment, Steve. Even though feedback is important to me, you may have assumed that I write to please someone besides myself.
Are you saying that my comments are too long and rambling or that I have a small assortment of issues and worn out jokes? Give it to me straight. I take punches beautifully. and you just might help me to be a better writer.
In either case, I regret not holding your interest, and point out how easy it is to speed read on the Internet – or to even avoid authors one doesn’t find interesting by simply being careful about the links one hits. I also encourage you to express your dissatisfaction to the editor. Maybe we can do something about the problem.
Thanks for your honesty, Steve. I like that.
D. Kellus Pruitt; DDS
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Darrell,
You may indeed write for yourself, but we have to wade thru … it!
Steve
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OK, Steve. You’ve got my attention now.
I don’t remember asking anyone to wade through my stuff but nevertheless, I’m flattered that you are offering to do this for me. If you are going to criticize my writing, it’s only fair that you give me something to work on so we can make our conversation meaningful. Like I asked earlier, please tell me what you don’t like about my style. Do I ramble on too much to make a point or is it my limited variety of issues?
And even though I respect your right to remain anonymous, who is ‘we”? Whom do you represent?
Darrell
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This topic, and thread, is now closed.
The Editors
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Telegraphed moves in the dental community
A couple of weeks ago, I noted that I was surprised to discover that my once-popular, but long forgotten 2009 article [above] on the Medical Executive-Post titled “Why ADA / Intelligent Dental Marketing Failed,” suddenly climbed out of archives to become the ME-P’s third most popular article.
I suggested that since the ME-P has close to half a million readers, the spike was almost certain to be significant, but I had no clue what caused it. I think I just discovered the reason: Pre-publication buzz.
Yesterday, the ADA News posted a press release announcing a second attempt at a business partnership with an advertising firm. Instead of Intelligent Dental Marketing (IDM) out of Utah, this time the ADA’s new business partner is PBHS Inc., with offices in NY and California.
Apparently, the unexpected wave of interest from many people in a short period of time came from the headquarters of the ADA and/or PBHS. I wonder if the internet research took place before or after the deal was signed. And did as much thought go into this business agreement as went into the defunct partnership with Dr. Mehmet Oz’s Sharecare.com, which shut down a couple of months ago.
What do you think?
D. Kellus Pruitt DDS
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