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About the American Dental Association
By Darrell K. Pruitt; DDS
Today, I especially cherish my right as a dues-paying member of the ADA – and as an American – to share my blunt, un-requested opinion as if you were a colleague, a patient or disinterested lawmaker.
For by early 2011, such liberty could warrant official sanction by the yet to be revealed national enforcer of the 2010 ADA Code of Conduct … if by then they find someone in the ADA capable of publicly announcing my crimes with a straight face, just before I receive a good talking-to about professionalism. If the future Ethics Enforcer would like me to help burnish his or her brand new gunslinger reputation quickly and deeply, I will gladly link any ADA official’s name to mine, and we’ll be companions for as long as I feel our union helps bring even more transparency to my profession. I’ve been an SEO assist for several ADA leaders for a couple of years already. Just ask ADA President Dr. Ron Tankersley – or – just Google his name.
Getting Spanked?
I’m not too worried about getting spanked. What can the ADA possibly do to me? Besides, officially, nobody will utter as much as a peep because of the transparency thing. Unofficially, ADA officials will privately send more attaboys because they trust me. They know by now that I never betray friends. I’m selectively transparent – which is my right but not yours, non-profit ADA. I think we both know, Dr. Tankersley, that I’m not the only one who thinks a minority of ADA leaders are playing naïve, childish and costly games.
Then again, it could just be my persistent, egocentric stage of emotional development that causes me to imagine that Resolution 82 is pointed directly at the nose of D. Kellus Pruitt; DDS.
“Patient rights, ethics considered” was posted on Nov 16 on the ADA News Online, and was written by Jennifer Garvin
http://www.ada.org/prof/resources/pubs/adanews/adanewsarticle.asp?articleid=3843
Garvin writes, “Res. 82 asks that the following principles be considered for an ADA member Code of Conduct:”
1. Members will maintain high standards of integrity and conduct their dealings as members of the Association in a professional manner.
2. Members will treat other members and Association officers, trustees and staff with courtesy and respect, and shall refrain from conduct that is unreasonably disruptive or is harassing.
3. Members will respect the decisions and polices of the Association and will not engage in conduct that is disruptive to Association staff or causes the Association to expend an unreasonable amount of time or effort to address.
4. Members are encouraged to use proper Association channels of communication to address differences.
5. Members will comply with all applicable laws and regulations, including but not limited to antitrust laws and regulations.
6. Members will respect and protect the intellectual property rights of the Association, including any trademarks, logos and copyrights.
7. Members will not use Association membership lists for personal solicitation purposes.
8. Members will not use all or part of Association lists, including membership directory, online member listings, conference attendees and education course participants for selling, prospecting or creating a directory or database.
9. Members will treat all information furnished by the Association as confidential and will not reproduce materials without the Association’s written approval.
10. Members will avoid conflicts of interest.
Assessment
Garvin concludes: “The resolution also states that a proposed member code of conduct, together with proposed sanction and enforcement procedures, be presented for consideration by the 2010 House of Delegates.” It is probably earthly unprofessional to make light of authoritarian bluster, but this really reminds me of the John Landis film “Animal House” when Dean Wormer put John Belushi and other ΔΤΧ Fraternity misfits on double secret probation. ADA Trustees shouldn’t take themselves so seriously. It looks silly to those watching. Or then again, keep it up. After all, it looks silly to those watching.
Toga Party! Dentures 2 for 1! Just ask for Dr. Ron.
Conclusion
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Filed under: Op-Editorials, Pruitt's Platform | Tagged: ADA, ADA News Online, American Dental Association, DDS, Dean Wormer, DMD, Jennifer Garvin, John Landis, Ronald Tankersley |
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Toying with the TDA
I posted “Who are you kidding?” on the hard to get to, dormant and unadvertised TDA Forum (TDA members only). Last week I discovered that every comment I posted on this forum over a period of more than a year was deleted without warning or recourse. The gutsy TDA employee became aggressive with me as punishment for challenging her authority on the TDA Facebook – which was subsequently closed down because of troublemaker problems the TDA wasn’t capable of handling without me. Isn’t that rich? I tried to warn them, but TDA leaders are far too important to listen to common members.
That’s OK. I’m a patient man.
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Who are you kidding?
“Let’s Talk” happens to be a motto that served as the title of a recent TDA President’s monthly, non-responsive column. The question I sent the new President was about the NPI number requirement for participation in CHIPS in Texas. I emailed it so quickly after receiving the TDAToday and reading his invitation for questions that mine had to be either the first or second one from membership.
Nevertheless, the TDA President who looks great in photos never got around to answering my question even privately. Who says there’s no such thing as a stupid question?
Censor me again if you feel you must, TDA, but you are already hemorrhaging credibility badly, and ineffective aggression will only cause more harm to you, not me. We both know that every time you and I knock heads – me an ADA member and you an ADA employee whose salary is paid by my dues – I understandably win. I simply outrank you as well as every officer in the ADA – elected or employed.
You’ll be much better off if you accept that against me or any other ADA member, you are defenseless, and you cannot expect any support from your anonymous boss. He’s hiding. He doesn’t care about your hellish situation, and will allow you to risk your reputation just so he can protect his. Those kinds of leaders in the ADA aren’t as hard to find as they are hard to hold personally accountable. But their time is coming.
I’m well aware of how bad it has become to work for the Texas Dental Association. Trust me. You aren’t the only employee who would quit if the economy was better.
We’re all adults here, aren’t we? Since the chances are very good that we will be alone on this forum for a long, long time, please share with me your long-term intentions with this TDA page. What can it hurt?
Grab some courage and be a sport for once, TDA. You never know where open and unrestricted conversation can lead. We might just change the world …. or you can continue to pretend to ignore me. That works swell for my purposes as well.
Darrell
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Awaiting the ADA.org Website – a Twitterpoem
Are you ready for another adventure in transparency? In October 2008, the ADA committed to opening a Website by March 31st, 2010. I’m holding them to it.
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@ADANews, I hope you witnessed the penalty for being found guilty of anonymous censorship. So when are you opening ADA.org? Mar 31st?
On the new, modern ADA.org Website that took 18 months to develop, will there be any place at all for an ADA member to post any question?
There must be a place for conversation. And that is all I need. I’ll just start posting simple, straightforward questions. What will you do?
In a little over three weeks, sports fans, @ADANews will either open the ADA.org Website, or ADA will tell membership why it didn’t open.
Someone is running out of wriggle room. Even though ADA employees dodged accountability for stuff like ADA/IDM, silence no longer works.
What excuse can the ADA communications director possibly give for not only failing to open the ADA Facebook, but the ADA Website as well?
No, I think ignoring the deadline is not a good option for @ADANews. Unfortunately, since I’m counting down the days, neither is opening.
If the ADA allows me to post ligitimate questions about topics such as the true cost of HIPAA, it won’t be long before list accumulates.
So what are you going to do, @ADANews? Are you going to censor my critical questions or choose to ignore them for a few more long months?
If an ADA officer with a name has the guts to (publicly) censor or otherwise block me, I will bring immediate harm to his or her career.
And if I am censored anonymously… well, that simply isn’t allowed in Texas. You have 23 days to choose accountability – or not, @ADANews.
Darrell K. Pruitt; DDS
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Are ADA leaders still just too good to listen?
Over the last four years, I’ve bumped into several recognized hi-tech experts in dentistry such as Dr. Paul Feuerstein, Dr. Marty Jablow, Ms. Sharalyn Fichtl, Dr. Donald Cohen, Olivia Wann RDH, Dr. David J. Pettigrew and others, including Dr. Robert Ahlstrom – the ADA’s recognized authority on HIPAA, security and Electronic Dental Records. Although all are influential cheerleaders for progress through digital technology, not one is willing to publicly acknowledge the unacceptable danger of the EDRs they sell to uninformed dentists. Since the welfare of my patients depends on the choices I make, as well as the choices that are made for me by stakeholders inside and outside the ADA, I find the HIT industry’s pervasive lack of ethics unacceptable. To view my conversations with each of the HIT experts, search the name with “D. Kellus Pruitt DDS.” I think most of our conversations are still readily available on Google and appear on the experts’ first or second pages.
The deception behind EDRs goes beyond biased advertising designed to move software rather than inform dentists. HIT misinformation has been an institutional embarrassment in the ADA for years. In July of 2007, the ADA’s Dr. Ahlstrom listed 11 bogus benefits of EDRs in testimony intended for HHS on behalf of ALL dentists in the nation, not just ADA members. His rationalizations are so lame that even the most enthusiastic HIT champions don’t dare repeat them. To read my rebuttal of Dr. Ahlstrom’s committee-approved talking points, one can search his name (even without mine) and arrive at the site of the massacre immediately. His (permanent?) first hit is “Dr. Robert H. Ahlstrom’s controversial HIPAA testimony.” from December 21, 2008 on Pruitt’s Platform. Don’t blame me for the harm he caused his reputation. Ahlstrom branded himself with his nation-wide mistake long before I picked up on it. He of all people should have known better than to shop fiction to those who shape law.
http://community.pennwelldentalgroup.com/forum/topics/dr-robert-h-ahlstroms
Within the last few weeks, I’ve used Facebook to publicly challenge two more HIT experts who both have large popular followings – Dr. Larry Emmott and some anonymous person working for Dental Technology Consultants. Based on the responses I received – and those I didn’t – it is my opinion that neither one appreciates the tremendous danger their products bring to dentists and their patients. But even their defensive, naive responses are better than the Madow brothers’ reaction to controversy in the dental industry. Those two practice management consultants use censorship to protect their Facebook fans from unpleasant secrets like how the Red Flags Rule affects dentists who sign up for ADA-approved CareCredit. But believe it or not, unfair vendor tricks get even slimier. I also came across a defenseless dental supply salesman recently whom I mercifully no longer name. He banned me from posting anything on his Facebook – even before I had a chance to do so. How good is that for transparency in the dental supply industry?
Hospitals and physicians in the U.S. have been given until 2015 to purchase, install and use in a “meaningful” way comprehensive electronic health records, or start receiving penalties from HHS instead of stimulus dollars. Nobody anywhere, even among the ADA leadership, is seriously discussing HHS digital plans for US dentists. All we get are charismatic vendors with happy sales pitches.
If dentists are to take advantage of the benefits of interoperability by 2015, or even 2025, we must think laterally right now: The costs of data breaches are climbing increasingly higher for dentists and patients, yet nobody in the industry dares admit that 95% of the nation’s dentists already endanger their businesses as well as the welfare of their patients by storing thousands of unprotected patient identifiers on office computers.
And don’t even bother to encrypt your digital records because today’s malware gets around encryption by cleverly infecting your software applications. Why go to the trouble of setting up an expensive and cumbersome defense that neither dentists nor patients trust? Encryption is the obsolete Maginot line of cyber-defense. It’s worse than no defense. Encryption is false security.
If we want progress instead of giddy selling points, we should take advantage of the fact that stolen dental treatment information is of no market value compared to other medical information. Someone more politically correct than I should announce his or her wonderful new idea to de-identify dental patients’ records. He or she will confidently point out that if there are no identifiers on a dentist’s computer, patients would not expect to be notified if it is stolen or hacked. Nobody, not even the Department of HHS, cares about patients’ stolen dental histories. Simplicity is the beauty of de-identification. If identities aren’t there, they can’t be stolen.
Because of shy leaders in my profession, our core values are increasingly vulnerable to harmful influences from stakeholders both inside and outside the ADA who cannot be held accountable to dentists. They are parasites, friends. I just hope image-obsessed vendors will quit hiding from us so we can perhaps move on to meaningful HIPAA-free progress which could also offer a safe Internet platform for Open Source Evidence-Based Dentistry. Consensual data-mining of de-identified dental records has the potential to uncover healthcare miracles long before anyone else in healthcare even gets around to interoperability. Dentistry could possibly lead the way in healthcare research if only stakeholders in the profession were honest instead of gleefully parasitic.
D. Kellus Pruitt; DDS
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You’re running out of time, ADA
Good morning, @ADANews
You have 3717 fans on your FB, @ADANews. You’ve delayed the opening of ADA.org from April 1st to “1st part of April.” Are you ready for me?
Have you seen the misleading information eDR vendors have been posting on the Internet? Where is your voice of reason, @ADANews?
Must I fight against harmful misinformation about the safety of eDRs because you won’t? What is wrong with my professional organization?
Where is the leadership, Dr. Ron Tankersley?
I noticed that you re-designed the ADA News Online. I went to the “advocacy” page, and it lists the ways money can be saved in dental care.
“Healthcare reform, Insurance reform, Medical liability reform, Regulatory reform, Tax reform and … Health information technology” (?)
If Dr. Larry Emmott and Dr. Lorne Lavine – both eDR vendors – cannot get away with that lame, deceptive statement, how can the ADA?
@ADANews, you have not been honest with members about HIPAA for too many years. As you can very well sense, judgment day is approaching.
Darrell K. Pruitt; DDS
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