Two honest dentists can disagree about whether a tiny fissure requires a filling or not, and all dentists fall on a continuum of philosophies ranging from conservative to aggressive in their treatments. You're basically given a blank check."Īnother reason is that dentistry genuinely involves a degree of subjectivity in each diagnosis. "For a dentist who practices alone, there's usually no one looking over your shoulder," my father, Sheldon Stromberg, said. One of the main reasons * is that, in the United States, dentistry has far less oversight than any other branch of medicine. Even so, more fraud likely is flying under the radar than people realize."
" The vast majority of dentists are honest and ethical. The crime is less than a tsunami and more than a trickle," said James Quiggle of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud. " There are no precise figures about how widespread dental fraud is. But experts say it still happens all too often. To be clear, this sort of fraud doesn't go on in most dental practices. His patients would visit other dentists for an emergency while he was away and be told they needed superfluous crowns or other complex work when a simple filling would have sufficed.ĭentistry has far less oversight than any other branch of medicine In the years since, while seeing other dentists, my brother has been told he needed six fillings that turned out to be totally unnecessary (based on my dad's look at his X-rays) and I've been pressured to buy prescription toothpaste and other products I didn't need.īack when he still practiced, my father occasionally saw this kind of thing firsthand. I've discovered this after growing up having dental work done by my father, who is now retired.
There are plenty of excellent, trustworthy dentists out there who make their patients' interests their top priority.īut there are also some unethical dentists who provide unnecessary treatments and products simply for profit.
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