Like so many others, the dental community has endured a nearly year-long stress test. For the most part, dentistry's adaptability to change has been the foundation for its success in recovering from this unprecedented year. Although none of us wants to dwell on the year that was 2020, it did present us with an education and a few "silver linings" as we faced global societal changes and internal cracks, highlighted by the unusual circumstances that characterized the year.
The internal and external trials of 2020 set us at Prosperident on the path of an internal review. Our current policies, products, and services were all put under the microscope to ensure that we kept pace with the changes around us. We have always been committed to remaining a valuable and contributing entity in the dental community. To this end, my team and I have been working with valued clients and outside consultants to ensure that now and in the future, inclusion, diversity, and respect for each other remain a part of our mandate.
2021 will not be like 2020, thank goodness, nor will it be like 2019. The "exercise" of 2020 has delivered to us the remarkable gift of being grateful for change, no matter how difficult. Who we were, who we are, and whom we want to be will create a shift in how we all do business forever. Prosperident is not just a collection of experienced investigators, IT experts, and talented support staff. We are and have for over 30 years been all of those things and more. We are the total of all the energy, experience, and expertise that our team member brings to each investigation and service that we produce or perform. This you can rely on!
2021 will mark the beginning of fresh starts in many areas for both you and us. In January, Prosperident will launch a quarterly themed webinar series. The theme for winter 2021 is "Designing Your Post Covid Practice," and it reflects our commitment to no-cost education and CE's for all dentists, dental specialists, and dental practice owners. We have streamlined the registration process and concentrated on presenting topics meant to inform and educate you as you continue to reach your goal of having your most prosperous business year ever!
If there is a silver lining to the events of 2020, Covid has created a wave of thoughtfulness and caring for each other that, while always a hallmark of the dental profession and Prosperident, seems more genuine and authentic now. This is the one gift offered by the past year's events that my team and I will hold close.
Please join Prosperident as we invite all of you to put 2020 in the rearview mirror and as we all forge ahead, both stronger and more connected than ever.
Happy New Year!
David Harris
Designing Your Post Covid Practice
Join us for our Winter 2021 webinar series. For information and registration please click HERE.
We are looking forward to "seeing" you on January 21!
The Holiday Season is upon us, and without a doubt, there will be a departure from all that we consider “normal” about our celebrations this year.
Like many of you, I’ve been feeling a little bit overwhelmed during the Coronavirus pandemic. Although my team and I were able to work, we certainly feel the pain and uncertainty that the pandemic has caused, particularly for our friends in the dental community.
I recently asked my team how Prosperident could best help you while you continue to face this unprecedented time of stress and uncertainty, especially going into this Holiday Season. The conversation that followed was inspiring, hopeful, and optimistic in ways that I couldn’t have imagined. Yay, team!
In the upcoming months, I will be putting several of my team’s progressive and innovative ideas into action. We are excited to evolve, and we sincerely want to continue to be a valued part of your community. Please know that we are here for you, and we will be making every effort to be available to you in every way we can to help you with your businesses as we celebrate the holidays and move forward into a brand new year.
The entire team at Prosperident wishes you and those you love a peaceful, joyous, and most of all, a safe and healthy holiday season.
Sincerely,
David Harris
Prosperident Inc. 888-398-2327 www.dentalembezzlement.com
We were pretty brave last month. We went head to head with the Presidential Debate — and we won. We had record registration.
In November, there will be no such distraction; the election will be a fading memory for most of us, and there are barely any sports on TV.
You have to like the title for November – Healing After Stealing. We will be talking about the effects of embezzlement on victims, staff, and their families.
The webinar takes place Thursday, November 19, at 8:00 pm Eastern / 5:00 pm Pacific.
If you want to catch up on our previous webinars, including October’s The Million Dollar Club, Meet Embezzlement’s Elite, you can access them at THIS LINK.
PACE CE credit is available.
We look forward to having you back in our audience!
Happy Halloween from Prosperident
Most of you know Amber Weber as one of our Senior Fraud Examiners and as an on-camera host of our webinar series. But it doesn’t stop there — Amber has lots of other talents.
Here is Amber giving a Halloween Greeting (and some wisdom about hiring) in a Halloween Rap.
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
Big News!
Our Embezzlement Risk Assessment Questionnaire has just received a major overhaul.
Our research into the causes and correlates of embezzlement never ceases, and we have just incorporated the results of that research into the new version of the Questionnaire.
The basic elements are still there; the Questionnaire consists of 37 yes/no completed online questions and takes less than 15 minutes. When someone takes it, they receive an overall score (we’ve simplified that a bit too) and an emailed report with details on a lot of the answers they provided and some recommendations based on their score.
The Questionnaire normally costs $139, but until November 30, we are offering it to practice owners at no cost.
What is the Most Secure Practice Management Software?
We are featuring excerpts from the upcoming second edition of David Harris’ book, Dental Embezzlement; the Art of Theft and the Science of Control.
A frequently asked question by doctors regarding practice management software is whether there is a brand of practice management software that is better at protecting a doctor against embezzlement.
This is like asking if one hammer is safer to use than another. All hammers have the potential to be safe if used properly and the potential to cause grievous harm if they are not.
Let’s start by looking at your software in a way that is slightly different than what you are accustomed to.
As we move past Halloween and the Christmas season rushes headlong toward us, many people pause for a nanosecond or two in November to give thanks for the blessings that have been bestowed on them.
With the second wave of Covid arriving, a politically polarized population, racial tensions, and many other issues in the world, negativity is not in short supply these days. However, it wasn’t hard for me to come up with a lot of positives:
1. I’m thankful that my family is healthy and safe.
2. I am blessed to have the chance to work with smart, talented people who are also fantastic human beings (although some should not quit their day jobs — see the column to the left).
3. I’m thankful that, through the challenges of Covid, dentists have found a way to deliver the care that their patients need safely.
4. I’m really thankful that my giant son is ensconsed in residence at college and that feeding him is now someone else’s problem. The meal plan really is a bargain for him.
5. Most of all, my team is humbled by the partnership we have formed with the dental profession as we guide its members through particularly stressful periods in their lives.
Thank you for the trust you have placed in us!
Sincerely,
David Harris
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
This month’s webinar promises to be particularly interesting. The topic is The Million Dollar Club – Meet Dentistry’s Elite.
David, Wendy, and Amber will be joined by some Prosperident investigators who will talk about some of their most interesting cases, including thieves who took over a million dollars from their dentists.
The webinar takes place Thursday, October 22, at 8:00 pm Eastern / 5:00 pm Pacific.
If you want to catch up on our previous webinars (we had some great topics like Forensic Hiring and
Steal and Conceal; What Serial Embezzlers Can Teach Us), you can access them at THIS LINK.
PACE CE credit is available.
We look forward to having you back in our audience!
A Minute with Scott Clifford
Scott is one of the three people at Prosperident to hold the title Supervising Examiner. This means that Scott has that combination of intelligence and tenacity to put him at the top of his field. Let’s hear what Scott has to say about practice management software.
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
How Big is the Embezzlement Problem?
Over the next few months, we are featuring excerpts from the upcoming second edition of David Harris’ book, Dental Embezzlement; the Art of Theft and the Science of Control.
The most recent broadly-based survey of embezzlement was performed by the American Dental Association’s Center for Dental Practice, which was published in 2019. In this survey, 19,991 dentists were polled, and the astonishing result was that 48.64% of those who responded confirmed that they had been victims of embezzlement.
It didn’t stop there. As can be seen from the graph above, almost half of the dentists who reported being embezzled disclosed that they had been victims more than once, with 9% of respondents confirming that they had been victimized four or more times.
I’ll confess to being a news junkie. I’ve always been interested in what is going on in the world.
Lately, my interest has faded. The COVID numbers, which people watch in the way they would look at baseball scores in other times, and the decidedly nasty turn that politics has taken, have made the news far less appealing for me than it once was.
However, I saw an ad a few days ago that gave me pause. The essence of the ad was that if the impact of the virus was that you were stuck at home, that meant that you have a home. If you are bothered about wearing a mask when buying groceries, that means you have money for food. The message was that a bit of adversity should not make us oblivious to the blessings that we have.
As I write this, two of our valued team members, Scott Clifford (profiled in the left column) and Rose Clifford, are on evacuation alert due to wildfires near their home in Northern California. This is the second time for Scott and Rose in the past two years – the 2018 Camp Fire came very close to them, and Scott’s parents lost their home in that fire.
Unquestionably, the virus has impacted both dentists and those who provide goods or services to dentists adversely. I know that Thanksgiving isn’t until next month, but as the ad suggested, let’s be grateful for what we have and give some thought to those less fortunate.
Sincerely,
David Harris
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
Profiles of the Embezzler – the Narcissistic Sociopath, the Hero and the Sugar Momma
These are some of the common profiles of embezzlers.
Many thieves display sociopathic characteristics, and also markers of a narcissist. Psychological literature recognizes this combination as a narcissistic sociopath. The accepted traits of an antisocial personality disorder (sociopathy) include:
It’s a bittersweet moment in my life as I pack my son off this week to begin his next chapter. He is off to college 1,200 miles away to study math and computer science, and play basketball.
I can barely remember what it was like not to have Ethan around. From the impish, perpetually giggling four-year-old who endlessly made me chase him around the house to the gigantic teenager, chronically leaving his size 16 sneakers where everyone would trip on them, he has always been there.
I feel badly for his generation. The COVID restrictions have meant that some of the important life events, like high school graduation and a prom, have been skipped over or radically altered. The college experience is going to be quite different from the carefree one with which we were blessed.
We adults have sufficient perspective to recognize that eventually, the disruption will pass, but I am not sure that teenagers can contextualize as easily.
In the way that the parents of baby boomers were forever altered by their experience coming of age in WW2, this group will always be the “COVID Generation”.
Ethan is handling it well and is excited about upcoming challenges. I hope that, if someone in your family is entering a new phase, that it goes equally well for them.
Sincerely,
David Harris
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
Prosperident’s next webinar takes place on August 19 at 8:00 pm Eastern / 5:00 pm Pacific. You won’t want to miss this one. The title is Picking Up the Pieces – What to do When the Unthinkable Happens.
David, Wendy, and Amber will talk about what to do (and not to do) when you suspect or find embezzlement in your practice, and what happens after embezzlement is confirmed.
To register, click HERE. If you want to catch up on our previous webinars (we had some great topics like Forensic Hiring and
Steal and Conceal; What Serial Embezzlers Can Teach Us), you can access them at THIS LINK.
PACE CE credit is available.
We look forward to having you back in our audience!
Hear From an Embezzlement Victim
Several of our clients generously agreed to be interviewed about their experience being embezzled. Here is part of Wendy Askins’ interview with Dr. Kirk Specht, where Kirk talks about what made him suspicious.
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
Delegation versus Abdication
Delegation is essential to the financial well-being of a practice. The existence of well-trained clinical and administrative staff allows a practice’s doctors to focus on their unique (and high value) competencies.
The concept of clinical delegation is well-understood by dentists and is something that they first encountered in dental school.
However, delegation of the administrative functions in a practice is something that is normally encountered much later when a dentist becomes the owner of a practice, and it happens without the dentist having the benefit of any training.
In our webinars, we talk a lot about doing a better job of screening applicants before hiring.
MANY cases of embezzlement could have been avoided if the practice owner had only taken a bit more time to learn about the applicant. (For a spectacular example, look HERE at an Oregon woman accused of stealing from a dental office while she was awaiting trial for stealing $1 million from a medical office.
Dentistry has allowed itself to fall out of step with how most businesses hire. I hear lots of excuses from dentists about the casualness with which they hire, almost none of which make sense. For example, I often hear that there is a “shortage of good people in my area”. Even if this were true (and after the COVID-caused adjustments happening now I’m not sure it is), it might prompt you to “lower the bar” and hire someone you might not in other circumstances. However, you still need to know to what extent you have compromised your standards.
In my 30+ years of working with dentistry, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing immense growth in dentistry’s ability to deliver clinical care. Unfortunately, the ability to screen out dangerous applicants hasn’t progressed at all.
We are currently working on adding some background checking services to our product offerings and expect to have an announcement soon.
Sincerely,
David Harris
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
We promised a return of our wildly popular webinar series return this month.
And we meant it! Wendy, Amber and David will be back on July 15 at 8:00 pm Eastern Time (5:00 pm Pacific).
And the topic is a humdinger — Steal and Conceal; What Serial Embezzlers Can Teach Us. The gang is going deep into our case files to show you some of the most voracious embezzlers we have encountered.
To register click HERE. If you want to catch up on our previous webinars (we had some great topics like Forensic Hiring and Reconcile or Reckless), you can access them at THIS LINK.
CE credit through PACE is available.
We look forward to having you back in our audience!
Hear From an Embezzlement Victim
Several of our clients generously agreed to be interviewed about their experience being embezzled. Here is part of Amber Weber’s interview with Dr. Dominique Backus, where Dominique talks about the emotions she experienced.
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
The Danger of “References”
A client of ours recently asked us this question:
I have an interviewee and I would like to talk to her past employers. She’s been at a local restaurant for the last 4 years, but it closed in April.
What would you recommend to do to check employment?
She listed 3 references from the restaurant with their contact info. Would you recommend to contact them?
Our client is someone who makes every effort to run his practice properly, and his dilemma forces us to deal with a seminal issue in background checking – who should we be speaking with?
We often have dentists say that they ask for “references” or that they check “references.” Normally they are doing this to show that they are careful about who they hire.
I’m thrilled that, after a two-month hiatus, I will be doing another webinar with my delightful co-hosts, Amber Weber and Wendy Askins.
Doing webinars was Amber’s idea, when COVID provided dentists with a dollop of unexpected downtime. Our Power Hours were successful beyond what we ever imagined, with audience size approaching 3,000 people.
After six episodes in the next six weeks, it was time for us to take a break. There are a lot of hours that go into preparing for a webinar, and doing it weekly is definitely a challenge. At a time when the priority of many dentists was getting back to work and adjusting to practicing in the COVID era, we signed off with a promise to make a return in July.
So it’s July, and our preparations for our July 15 webinar are moving along nicely. We have a topic that I am really excited about, and as usual we will be offering lots of useful pearls for our audience. You can register using THIS LINK, and we look forward to “seeing” you in a couple of weeks.
Sincerely,
David Harris
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
Prosperident Power Hour Webinar Series Will Return
One of our team suggested that we should do a webinar. That webinar evolved into a series of six episodes that ran in April and May.
Our objective was to take advantage of enforced downtime to give dentists vital knowledge for running their practices. We also gave away plenty of toolbox items.
The series was a smashing success, with an audience exceeding 3,000 people.
It also became a true team effort. In addition to our on-camera hosts, Amber Weber, Wendy Askins and David Harris, 15 other team members at Prosperident were involved at some level.
We covered some great topics and were able to bring the unique perspective of Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts.
If you missed a webinar, recordings of all of them are available on our website. Click on the links below to get there.
If you were part of our audience, we would like to thank you for being part of a great experience.
If you missed out on any of the toolbox items that were mentioned in a webinar, ask us nicely HERE, and we will probably feel sorry for you and help you out.
As dentists everywhere focus on getting their practices reopened and adjusting to the new normal, we have taken a hiatus from webinars, but we are planning a return in July.
Stay tuned — we will have more details in the coming weeks.
Reconcile or Reckless?
Amber Weber, David Harris and Wendy Askins
When someone wants to embezzle from you, their approach is predictable. They begin by asking themselves whether the reconciliation process used in your practice is thorough and complete. By “reconciliation” we are referring to the oversight by practice owners of the daily and monthly balancing done by staff. In its simplest form, reconciliation is the process of ensuring that the money that your practice management software says you received actually got deposited to your bank.
If a thief realizes that your reconciliation process is flawed (which is probably the case in 75% of practices), this realization bestows a particular blessing on that thief. He or she can steal by simply “shorting” the deposit; in other words, they can steal without needing to tamper with individual patient accounts to conceal it. Stealing in this way does not require high intellect or any in-depth understanding of your practice management software.
On the other hand, if a would-be thief believes that a deficient deposit would be noticed (in other words that the reconciliation process has integrity), in order to steal, he or she is faced with a much greater challenge.
Over the past few weeks, I have increasingly been hearing some wonderful words.
Those words are often said almost apologetically and are along the lines of “I need to postpone our meeting because right now, I am really busy reopening my practice.”
If this is your situation, there is no need for contrition. Each dentist returning to practice represents a milestone in our society awakening from its hibernation, and hearing a dentist declare that they are back in business is a sweet sound indeed.
While the “new normal” has its share of complications like PPE, facility modifications for many, and patients waiting in their cars for appointments, we are thrilled to see you regaining your ability to do what you trained to do, and once again begin earning a living.
We at Prosperident are rejoicing in this hard-won victory against Covid-19, and we are here for you when you need us.
As our way of giving back to the dental community, until June 30, we are waiving our normal $139 fee for our Embezzlement Risk Assessment Questionnaire — please email us at requests@prosperident.com to take us up on this offer.
Sincerely,
David Harris
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
April 8 webinar – The COVID Crisis: Use Downtime to Prevent Chaos
Join Prosperident’s David Harris and Amber Weber as they outline strategies for making use of enforced downtime to improve protection and enhance your practice’s financial well-being.
This is a different type of captivity, as one of our embezzlers gets put in handcuffs.
Our presentations are not “theory” from someone who has read about embezzlement. We give you the gritty details from speakers who have experienced them.
The coronavirus has forced cancelation of many Spring speaking events, but we would love to speak for you in the fall or winter of 2020.
May 9
Smile Source Exchange, Atlanta GA
Jul 3
University of the West Indies, Jamaica
Sep 1
Greater Long Island Dental Meeting,
Oct 17
Southern Association of Orthodontists, Nashville TN
2021
Feb 25
Chicago Dental Society Mid-Winter Meeting, Chicago IL
Mar 11
Canadian Dental Association / Pacific Dental Conference, Vancouver BC
Apr 16
East Texas Dental Society, Bullard TX
May 8
Ontario Dental Association, Toronto ON
To book a speaker, or for more information, click HERE or call us at 888-398-2327.
Want to make good use of your downtime? Our CEO’s book is available on AMAZON.
How is Embezzlement Detected?
The American Dental Association’s Council on Dental Practice recently released the results of a survey completed last year on embezzlement.
One of the questions on the survey addressed the question of behaviors exhibited by embezzlers. The answers were enlightening.
When I wrote last month about the impending storm coming from the Coronavirus, I don’t think I realized the full impact it would have on me personally.
I’ve never suffered from triskaidekaphobia, but that may change. In the month ending on March 13, I did four speaking engagements, which necessitated crossing the continent three times, with a total of 18 airplane rides.
What is significant about March 13? I arrived home from speaking in California at midnight of March 12. The next morning, I was in my office and felt slightly unwell. I looked online at the symptoms of COVID-19, and realized that they were consistent with how I was feeling. I called Public Health, and based on my symptoms and travel schedule, they sent me for testing right away. The next evening I got the call telling me that results were positive and that I was Nova Scotia’s first confirmed case (which is not how I wanted to enter the history books!).
Last week, after quarantining myself and with symptoms gone, I was retested. This test showed no coronavirus, so I also became my province’s first “recovered” patient.
For me, the symptoms were exceedingly mild, and not enough to even want to make me stay home from work. I’m so grateful that, after checking with the people I encountered before I had my first test, I do not seem to have infected a single person. I was particularly worried because I had sat with my octogenarian father at a basketball game, and had contact with several other seniors as well. Fortunately, all of them are well.
With a vaccine still some distance off, and infection rates climbing in the US and Canada despite the efforts of the authorities, the carnage from this disease is far from over. I’m thankful that my own COVID experience was unremarkable, but I do fear for humanity on this one.
I wish for your continued health and safety.
Sincerely,
David Harris
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
The American Dental Association’s Council on Dental Practice recently released the results of a survey completed last year on embezzlement. There are some interesting results, and they generally do not constitute good news for the dental profession.
The coronavirus has been dominating the headlines lately, particularly as the virus appears to now have gained a foothold in North America. The oceans that once prevented intercontinental transmission of diseases seem unlikely to protect us in our very mobile 21st Century society.
One of the worst epidemics in history was the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918-1919. This flu spread quickly between soldiers existing in crowded conditions in Europe, and then was disseminated broadly when those soldiers returned home after the end of World War 1, which probably represented the biggest mass migration of people to that point. Eventually, Spanish Flu affected 27% of the world’s population, with a mortality rate of close to 10%.
The spread of coronavirus has had far-reaching effects, including sudden concerns about the US economy that have had the markets in free-fall over the past week. The Tokyo Olympics seem to be in some jeopardy, and the demand for protective masks by people has put the mask supply for dental practices in jeopardy.
Hopefully, the intervention of modern medicine will make the mortality rate far less than what happened a century ago, along with developing a vaccine to protect the population. In the meantime, as someone who spends a lot of time on airplanes and in venues with large concentrations of people such as dental conferences, I am acutely aware of my vulnerability.
While I hesitate to draw any kind of comparison between a potentially deadly disease and embezzlement, some recent information released by the ADA confirms that we have a pandemic of our own taking place. Embezzlement numbers are up significantly from a decade ago, and the data suggest that close to 100% of dentists will be afflicted sooner or later.
Although embezzlement does not present the same kind of danger to society as the coronavirus does, to a victim the consequences can be devastating. So just like we wash our hands to protect ourselves from pathogens, when it comes to embezzlement the cure is vastly preferable to the disease.
I wish you both physical and financial well-being.
Sincerely,
David Harris
Did you miss a previous newsletter? We archive them HERE.
We are Prosperident, Dentistry’s Embezzlement Experts
David Harris
David Harris
