According to one report, "State and local health officials planned to mail notices today urging 7,000 patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington to seek medical screenings for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. Inspectors allege workers at his two clinics used dirty equipment and risked cross-contamination to the point that the state's Dentistry Board branded Harrington a "menace to the public health."
If you want the grisly details, you can simply do a search for Dr. W. Scott Harrington or click here for the actual 17-violation complaint filed by the state, although the media reports are much more flowery. One thing about this, however, is that although they are mailing notices to 7000 of his patients, the patient information culled from his records only go back to 2007 -- yet he's been practicing for 36 years.
I actually planned to mail this newsletter last Friday, but I dropped everything when I read this story. Of course, I could join the gang and slam this worthless piece of human flesh, but then I thought, "Well, he's probably suffering enough over his shoddy practices unless he's a psychopath, in which case all he's upset about is getting caught, no doubt. But, certainly his family must just be on the floor...they must be packing their bags." I'd leave Oklahoma in a New York minute. My concern for the good doctor's emotional state of mind dried up, though, when my thoughts go back to those 7000 patients.
Something else really bothered me though.
Various articles state that the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) is consulting and their spokeswoman Abbigail Tumpey said that
such situations involving dental clinics are rare. However, this expert follows with, 'Last year a
Colorado oral surgeon was accused of re-using needles and syringes, prompting letters to 8,000 patients, Tumpey said. It wasn't clear whether anyone was actually infected,' according to one news account. A full year later and it 'wasn't clear', eh?
These situations are rare? Is she kidding?
If this rarity is, in fact, true, the lack of reports to the CDCP
MIGHT be due to the fact there are absolutely no state or local health department inspections on dental clinics
unless there are reports of some potential health hazards. While they will inspect your local McDonald's regularly, they don't do inspections on dental offices simply because they do not have the knowledge and training to do so. Therefore, the responsibility for keeping the dental office sanitary rests entirely on the dentist.
In this case, however, Dr. Harrington shrugged it off, claiming that he relied in his (untrained) staff to take care of that sort of thing.
Abbigail Tumpey, the CDCP's 'Health Communications Specialist', should familiarize herself with another federal agency called
OSHA. There, she would find listed
plenty of violators, including their charges and fines. In fact, she should read CDCP's own, '
Common CDC Violations Observed in Dental Offices' for a clue as to how
RARE this sort of thing is.
How does OSHA actually catch violators?
Generally, the reports come from either the dental staff or the patient.
This is the only oversight the practice has! Problems arise with reporting on your boss, of course, and one
Boston area dentist was heavily fined for firing the staff member who reported him. There are others.
In the case of patients reporting anything to OSHA, I'm sure that very few patients would have enough understanding of safety or sanitary procedures to know if they were being violated or not. Besides, I'm guessing that most patients are more concerned with the procedure they are about to receive. If you do notice a violation, it needs to be reported but I'd bypass the dental board and go straight to
OSHA.
Moving on...
By no means should the dentist take all the blame for sanitation violations. To be fair, we must include medical offices, hospitals, manufacturers, restaurants, of course, and on and on. But when it comes to doctors, you might simply assume that 'First, do no harm' is always foremost in their minds.
Where else might one find unsanitary conditions regularly close at hand...?
Bringing it home.
My thoughts lead me to my own surroundings. Common sense tells us to keep our appliances sanitary, but when was the last time you changed the filter in your refrigerator, should you have one which dispenses water and ice? Or that dinky filter screwed on to the faucet at your kitchen sink? How about that carbon filter in your water pitcher?
You
do know that the effectiveness of these filters diminish with each use, don't you? If the instructions say to change the filter after 30 days and you're still using after 8 months, well...
You want to ruffle some feathers? Ask your boss when the last time was they cleaned out the water dispenser with the big 5-gallon bottle sitting on top? Do you suppose nothing could be growing in that dark, wet inner sanctum?
The problem is that we don't generally think about these things. According to Dr. W. Scott Harrington, leaving this job to his untrained assistants, he didn't generally think about these things either, so why should should we be so hard on him? Well, if I find something nasty dripping out of my shower head, I don't have to notify 7000 people that they might be infected with Hep. C or AIDS, for one thing.
What you don't know...
Maybe it would be a good thing if dentists would post their office sanitation status like they now do with informing the public about the type of amalgam they use for fillings. Why wait for another government mandate? If I was a dentist, I'd get myself and staff trained and certified, clean the place up to and maintain those standards, then on my web site I'd post something like,
'Our office is 100% OSHA/CDCP compliant with all current sanitation practices!' It would certainly mean a lot to me if I was shopping for a dentist...
Next time you visit the dentist, ask to see the office's CDC or OSHA compliance certificate. They have one? Great!
Make sure to check the date on it.
In the December 2012 issue of the OraMedia Newsletter with the article about 
*A periodontal pocket is what forms as the decay process proceeds below the gum line, gradually eating away at the connective tissue between the teeth and gums. As the decay process continues, a 'pocket' forms, the depth of which is measured in millimeters. Severity of periodontal disease is often based on this depth. Normal pocket depth may be 1-2 millimeters and where pocket depth is 4mm or deeper, serious attention should be given. Receding gums commonly accompany this decay process