Episode length: 1h 14m | Published: 2021-07-23
Most dental practice owners focus their security concerns on employees — and rightly so. But the threats to your practice don't stop at the front door. Prosperident's Amber Weber, David Harris, and Wendy Askins turn their investigative lens outward, examining the external threats that can cause serious financial and operational damage to a dental practice.
Topics covered include:
A secure practice is one that is vigilant about threats from every direction.
To learn more about comprehensive practice protection, visit www.prosperident.com or schedule a consultation at www.prosperident.com/meetwithdavid.
You are listening to the Dental Practice Owner's Podcast brought to you by Prosperident. From our unique perspective as dentistry's embezzlement experts, Prosperident's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners. The Dental Practice Owner's Podcast brings you strategies, tools, and tips that you can use and dentistry's thought leaders as guests. So sit back, relax, and listen to Prosperident's Amber Weber, Wendy Askins, and David
Harris talk about the issues that matter to you. Hi everybody. I'd like to welcome you all. I'm David Harris and my colleagues, Amber
Weber and Wendy Askins are with me. Welcome, it's Thursday night and that's webinar night and it's the curtain call for us. We have two more webinars and
after that we're done. So on August 19th, we've got a very special event. It's called Cybersecurity in Dental Practice and we're going to welcome a terrific guest with us. His name is Gary Salman. Gary is an incredibly specialized walking encyclopedia on cybersecurity and he will have a lot you can take away. And then we're doing the finale and the finale is on September 23rd and it's called Everything Important About Embezzlement in One Hour and I think it's going to be a lot of the three
of us telling some more stories. Why are we wrapping up the webinars? A couple of reasons. The big one is we started this a little over a year ago when you were all sitting at home bored because COVID had shut down your practices and now everybody's back to work and they've got some things to do and to catch up on the time that they missed so everybody's getting busier and we're getting busier and we're going to move on to other projects but we're certainly
not going to vanish. Just a reminder that you are already registered for both of those webinars so there's nothing you have to do. You'll get a confirmation email in a day or so that just reminds you about the next one but no action needed on your part whatsoever. And one of the reasons that we're shutting down the webinars is that live speaking is getting busier for us and if you're wondering where we're speaking you can go to that page on our
website and see some of the places that we'll be speaking. In the next six months I will probably travel 50 or 60,000 miles and I'll be at Chicago midwinter and on the west coast several times and speaking a few times in Texas, lots and lots of places you can see us. And finally don't forget that there is CE credit available tonight thanks to our good friends at Altura Periodontics in Colorado. The way that you get the CE is that there's an email
that comes out around when we're going to finish up tonight in about an hour and 15 minutes and there's a button there that you click and you just fill in a very quick form and you'll have your CE certificate within about five minutes. Alright so sticking with our theme for our Curtin Call series, Prevent Your Practice from Overheating, tonight we really wanted to focus on the external threats that maybe you're overlooking areas that
we're aware of that could cause a loss to the practice but maybe we're not thinking about the diverse patterns that can exist within these external threats. We'll be focusing in these areas tonight but we want to take time to share personal stories, experience and insight into areas that you could be unknowingly overlooking such as burglary. I mean we all have heard of you know breaking and entering. How vulnerable are you in your
practice to this happening? Other thing that we often overlook because we're constantly helping people in pain, medication scams. This is something that is becoming more and more prevalent not just in dentistry but in other areas of medicine as well. So that's an external threat that we don't always think about and then identity and information theft. What you see sometimes with a patient may not always be what you get. So tonight
we really wanted to focus on those areas that maybe coming at you that maybe you just haven't thought about and we don't want you to be overlooking. So like Amber was saying tonight we're going to ask you
to step outside of your good nature and your good heart once again. And you know I think we go into our offices or even into our homes and we look around and we're so used to seeing everything there all the time that we don't realize that people outside of us see something very different than we do. So for example what could you have in your practice or in your building that somebody might want to steal? Well number one you're a
business so how about cash? And you know we always talk about cash. Technically that includes checks too because checks can be stolen and deposited or cashed. How about narcotics? After all you do work in a doctor's office or you are a doctor. We have expensive computer equipment in there with big windows in the front or the back of our office. So everyone can see how beautiful our offices and all that
beautiful equipment in there all the computer equipment. And then one thing that we always overlook is the dark side value of PHI that we
have our hands on. So we're going to talk about some of those things tonight as well. Awesome and one thing I wanted to mention you've all gotten to know Amber Weber over the last year and a half or so. The practice that she's gotten here speaking and doing webinars has helped her. She entered a speaking competition. This is probably the most prestigious speaking competition
in dentistry and I am so proud to say that she was the runner up. And that was just fantastic. So she has not been wasting her time here whatsoever and you're going to see a lot more of Amber on podiums. What I'm going to talk about first is physical security and I'll mention that I had a brief career in my teens breaking into houses. And still when my
neighbors get locked out of their house, you know, I'm the guy they come to see because they think I can probably get them in. And a lot of burglary is easy to stop with relatively basic solutions. And if you see the picture on the screen right now, that's the front door of a dental office. And if you look at it, you'll notice that the hinges are on the
outside of the door, which is pretty common because in a lot of public buildings, the rule is that the doors must open outward. Now, to a thief, if I want to get in this door, all I need is a hammer and a screwdriver and I pop the pins out of those hinges and then the whole door comes off. So if you tomorrow or whenever you're in your practice next, if
you happen to notice that your hinges are on the outside of the door, get your landlord or if you own the building hire somebody to put in what are called set screws. And set screws will just make it so that somebody can't lift those pins from the hinges. It's probably a $25 solution to the problem. But have a look at your doors, see if any do have
external hinges. What you see here is called an anti-Jimmy plate. So a lot of locks, and you probably all notice this, if you look at the lock of a door, it has a tongue that goes from the door into the wall and the tongue is curved and it's curved so that it slides properly into the into the door into the wall or the frame. But also if that curve
faces outward, which it normally does, then somebody with a credit card or or something similar can often kind of push the push the tongue in and open the door. So this plate that screwed on there will stop that. The other thing is, let me go one more. Yeah, the the thing there that looks kind of like a pistol in the middle. That's a that's a type
of lock pick. It's called a bump pick. And originally lock picking was a fairly difficult art and it took a long time to learn. These bump picks, which you can buy on the internet, you know, a teenager can figure out how to do it in about 10 minutes and and can pick almost any lock. So the other option is get rid of get rid of something that takes a
key, you know, I have a have a keyless entry pad, either with a pass with a with a passcard or a code, and that will stop the people who want to use things like these bump picks. One of the other weaknesses that a lot of practices have and actually a lot of your houses to everything I'm saying here also applies to your house is they have a
sliding glass door. And the glass door has a lock, which is fairly sturdy. But if you look at the other door, the one that doesn't slide, normally they're screwed to the wall with about two screws. And it's generally not very hard to pop those screws out and then effectively turn the non sliding door into the sliding one. So what you see
there is a locking bar and it will stop somebody from from just popping the lock and getting access to that door. So all these things are relatively inexpensive. But when you when you next see your office, take a look around and you'll see some things probably that you haven't before. Just continuing that theme. Probably the best thing you can do
to deter burglars is alarm stickers. When I got the alarm installed in my house, the guy kind of joked with me and he said, you know what? Basically, we charge $1,800 to put the stickers around your house and then we throw in the alarm system for free. So if I'm a thief, and I can choose between breaking into two businesses and one has an
alarm system, and one doesn't every single time I'm going to go at the business that does not have the alarm stickers. So have the alarm first of all and second, put stickers up at every door and every window you want anybody who's contemplating breaking in to know that when they do there's going to be a very loud noise and the police will be
there in a few minutes. Take a look at your exterior lighting. If a thief is going to pick a lock, if they're going to Jimmy a door, if they're going to take the hinge pins out, they want to do that somewhere where they think they won't be observed. So, you know, if the front of your practice faces the street, but there's
a back entrance and every practice really has two entrances. If the back entrance is dark, that's where I'm going to go. If you put up exterior lighting and the best stuff is motion sensors, you know, stuff that's activated by motion. If you do that, then a burglar is going to find sitting there and trying to pick
your lock, you know, while bathed in light that's coming down from above being a lot less comfortable. If there is somewhere that somebody can try to get access and not be observed, that needs to be a door that you really need to reinforce or a window. So, that's when there might be multiple locks on the
door. Make sure that it's a steel door or a steel clad door and not simply a wood one. You know, when you're looking at places to reinforce, the one where somebody can sit there for 10 minutes and do whatever they're going to do to gain access is when you really need to work on it. And the
other thing is most of your practices probably don't have narcotics or any appreciable quantity of them, but these don't necessarily know that. So make very sure that you have a known narcotics sign. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't matter. Just on your front door, you need a sign that
says simply there are no narcotics on the premises. The thing about burglary is that it is opportunistic. And what I mean by that is if I'm going to rob somewhere, I've got a choice of probably five or 10 or 50 places I could rob. And if I'm a thief, I'm going to go with the one that
I perceive is going to be the easiest and is going to pose the least danger to me. So, it's kind of like what somebody said to me when we were hiking in the woods, you know, if a bear chases us, I don't have to be faster than the bear, David. I just have to be
faster than you. And I'll say exactly the same thing. All you have to do is convince a thief that it's easier to rob the business next door. And by the way, that's one of the key differences between burglary and embezzlement. You know, when we, when we
think about burglars, it's easy for them to change victims. And this kind of thinking what's on your screen will do that. You've heard us say in previous webinars that the same kind of thinking typically doesn't work for embezzlers. Why? Because for an
embezzler to change victims is a lot bigger undertaking than a snatch and grab person. If an embezzler is going to change victims, they've got to quit their job somewhere, get hired somewhere else and then invest enough time to understand
systems. And of course, cameras are a really good idea. As a deterrent, you know, nobody wants to sit there in full view of a camera for five minutes while they pick your lock. Now, that's not the only thing you need to be
concerned about. There are also people who come into your office for legitimate reasons and or apparently legitimate reasons and do bad things. Let's watch this video and then Wendy's going to tell you a little part. Tonight, a breakroom
bandit hits up at Grenadier Bay Dental Office, snatching wallets, cell phones, and all the thefts are caught on surveillance. Tonight, investigators are hoping somebody knows who this personature is. And they're looking into whether
she may have hit another business as well. KCRI3's Dana Griffin is checking the search. Take a good look at this woman. I thought it was safe. I honestly didn't think that anybody would be bold enough to come in and do
that. She walked into the William Gilbert Dental's office in Granad Bay last Wednesday asking to use the restroom. It seems like she was very comfortable with the office like she knew where the bathroom was. She knew
where she was going. The employees said sure, but instead of going to the restroom, she walked into the staff lounge and over here is where our employee lockers are where she helped herself. And minutes later, video
shows her running out of the back door with a purse filled with wallets, cell phones, car keys, and a pair of sunglasses. I work so hard for my stuff and just three minutes that I took her to come through
the front door out the back to take all of our stuff. Three days later, that woman shows up here in Zackerville to the Blake Austin Beauty Academy. She's wearing the same exact clothes the way her hair is.
And then I really looked and I didn't really hit me until, you know, my co-worker said, are those your glasses? And I really looked and was like, yes, those are my glasses. One thing I absolutely love about
what we do is that you cannot make this stuff up. I mean, close several times and it just makes me laugh. I mean, the situation is not funny, but I mean, the nerve of people. So let's talk
about people, visitors to your office that are supposed to be there and those that are there for de ferious reasons. Number one, as you saw on the video previously, their whole
entire office was on camera. And I love that. I hear a lot of staff members saying, you know, I don't want my doctor watching me 24 hours a day or my doctor wants to put
cameras up in the office just so he or she can watch what I'm doing and make sure I'm working and make sure I'm not making personal calls. Let me tell you that is not
true at all. And actually, I had a situation when I worked as the managing director of a large group practice that was like absolutely wacko.
A patient had come in and accused one of the ladies at the front desk of cursing her out and throwing a set of keys at her. So of course, the complaint ended up with me.
And I said, let me review the video. And guess what? It was the exact opposite of what that patient said. It was the patient that was attacking the staff member
calling the staff member of names, throwing keys at the staff member. So the staff member, of course, was exonerated and the patient was released.
So internal cameras, great idea. Combination locks on the back doors of your building. I get Amber told you we had a ton of these stories. I mean, you work in a
dental office and my goodness, you just see the craziest things. I worked in an office where it had a clinic at the first part of the building and then the backside of the building kind of
out of sight was where the corporate offices were. I was sitting in my office one day and my office was right by one of the back doors. I'm sitting in my office one
day and I happened to look up and I see someone walking through the back door. And I thought, well, that's interesting. She must be here for lunch when the staff
members, something like that. Well, I kind of got suspicious and so I came out of my office and I stood at the end of the hall and I watched this woman meander in and out of
different offices and different areas of our corporate offices because pretty much everyone was in the clinic working. So there weren't that many people back there.
And then I saw her peek in the door frame of the staff lounge and then she walked in and I thought, OK, no way this is happening. So I went and I asked her, I
said, man, can I help you? And she said, no. And I said, what are you doing in here? And she said, I'm just looking around. And I said, well, let me take
you to the clinic or one of our patients, are you one of our patients or possibly one of your children are patients? No, I'm just looking around. So she had just driven up to
the back parking lot, opened the door and walked right in. So we have these combination locks, you know, where you just put in your code on every door, which was not monitored, like
in the clinic. And that was a huge help. We know that we or we should be escorting patients back to their seats when it's their turn to enter
into the clinic area. But how about strangers that just walk in like this woman, this crazy woman did in the other video, you know, how a stranger just walks in
and says, can I go to the bathroom? We just say, oh, yeah, go ahead and go on back, right? So let's make it a try to make it a point to escort everyone that comes into our door.
If they're going to go somewhere else in our office, then let's take them there, right? And then nonpatients, anyone that's a nonpatient, you need to ask for an ID if they're
going to be going back into your clinic. I mean, this could also be, I mean, you know, I'm really talking about people that you don't know offhand. Like if you know a patient's
parent, well, of course, you recognize them by sight, right? That's not really what I'm talking about. I'm actually talking about someone that comes in to fix your CBCT machine
if it's broken or inter radiograph machine that you have. Ask to see their ID so that you know exactly who they are and why they're there and then escort them back to the area
where they're supposed to be. And I love the idea of having a visitor badge for visitors that come to your office. Again, maintenance people, whatever, just so that
other staff members in the building know that they can trust that person. So they're not sitting at their clinical chair, you know, going, good Lord, who is this person?
Why are they here? So I like that idea, too. Yeah. And more to the point, somebody without a visitor badge at that point becomes needing scrutiny.
Yeah. It's vicious. Definitely. Yeah. So this is an area that I should hate to say excites me tonight. Right. The good old merchant
terminal. How many of this see this everywhere we go now from movie theaters to getting gas in your car. This machine is everywhere now. And when I think of the merchant
terminal, it makes me think of Madonna and her themes on we're living in a material world. OK, people, we're living in a digital world here. OK. And this digital world,
this plastic box can easily allow a thief to turn it into that theme song we're living in a material world. So this is a very, very opportunistic plastic box.
And even though we see it everywhere and we become comfortable with it, it is one of a very overlooked threat that I've seen for personal experience.
So first thing, anybody can process a refund to their card, whether they've paid with you or not, they can go up and process that refund. So that's one big opportunistic
threat, whether it's a team member or a patient that you're overlooking, they can swipe it back in there. And we're in a digital world. People understand technology now.
So you really need to have some key pass codes and protection in here. I can go get a pre-paid credit card, put it in your merchant terminal.
And if you did not have some safety systems in check, then I could definitely follow that Madonna theme song I was talking to you about. Now, my personal experience with
this, when we first got into the digital world 22 years ago when I got into dentistry, the pass code on most of the boxes that you get are still very basic, you know,
one, two, three, four, or two, two, two, two. And how many times do you see those not changed? So definitely look at your options and make sure that
that pass code is changed. I've even worked in some offices and had experience in offices that whoever is processing payments in order to process a payment,
your team member has to have a pass code to process a payment so that there's also a paper trail of, you know, how that happened, who was in charge of that.
So definitely look at those codes and realize that these were in that digital world, like I was saying. You know, Amber, I think a lot of this stuff also happens
when or because, you know, some offices, the majority of dental offices are small and they maybe have one person at the front desk and that person is constantly having to leave
the front desk area so that they can go take care of other stuff or run back to the clinic or ask a doctor a question. And everything is not monitored there and it doesn't take long.
I mean, the very first orthodontic office I ever worked in, someone was processing the deposit at the end of the day. And she had, I mean, she
didn't even have them laying. It was like a two tier counter. She didn't even have it laying up on the counter. It was on the lower counter.
But, you know, it was the end of the day. We were busy. She was ready to go home. We weren't through with patients yet, but we almost were.
And she was working to balance the deposit that day. The patient comes up, asks a question. And there were several patients there. But one patient asked a question. She leaves the front desk.
She comes back. All of the patients are gone and the money, the cash and the checks are gone as well. Yeah. So someone stole, just stole
the deposit right off of her desk. Well, and one thing with, like I said, we're in a digital world, definitely look into your software because another safeguard you can do with these merchant
terminals is have them tied directly into your dental software if that is an option. It doesn't allow external people like patients or the strangers that you were talking about
Wendy to walk in and have as easy access to those machines but definitely research that option in your software. Another digital threat we used to live in the good old
fold them over paper charts, right? Patients couldn't really see what we did. We managed all their balance, what they owed us, what was happening within the practice in the old paper chart.
But as I said, we've moved into a digital world. So here is a key indicator when I was a hygienist and I made this mistake. Make sure when you walk away
to go get your doctor for the exam or doctor or assistant when you leave that patient alone in the room that that patient can't turn around and start changing things in their own account
from entering. Oh, I'm going to zero my account out here. I don't owe the two thousand dollars for the dental treatment I just had last week. So even though they might not work
within your practice management software, how many of us in the audience today have a smartphone? I bet we're all going to raise our hand, right? And how how quick are people now to learn technology
and look at a screen and within, you know, a matter of minutes be able to to do something. So you want to make sure that if you do have to leave a patient alone in the practice
that they don't have their rights in the capacity to get to that and complete something like that. So we've just really got to think about that. We're in a digital world now and that's a big external threat
that could happen when nobody would even know it was going on. So true. And sorry, I was trying to play a little of Madonna's material world there, but then my cell phone got stuck
and I couldn't shut it off. So what I think of when I thought about, you know, we're in a digital world and it's so true. You know, one of the words from Madonna. So this is what got me thinking about almost 20 years ago.
If they don't give me proper credit, I just walk away. So when doctors didn't want to take credit cards and stuff, when the big credit card thing was out, it was like, OK, I don't have checker cash anymore. I just walk away.
That is way from long time ago for me, Dave. All right, let's let's change gears for a minute. Let's think about medication theft. And I'm going to show you something that just absolutely makes me scratch my head. So there's a website and you can check
this out for yourself. It's called streetrx.com. And when you go to that website, you can enter a location. So I put in Denver. And what this website does is it gives you
the street price of various medications. So if you look in Denver, a five milligram oxycodone pill went for $15. And in the upper left hand corner, you can enter what you paid for a street drug. So I have a lot of questions here.
The first question I have is, who the heck is paying for this? I mean, putting this site up costs money and somebody somewhere is paying for it. And I just can't quite figure out the commercial interest behind it. But the fact is that you have the power to prescribe
and that the medications that you could prescribe have street value. So there are lots of people trying to think of various ways to scam you out of a prescription. The lost opioids. I know this is all something
that we're very familiar with right now, the opioid epidemic. And even though everything is becoming digital, it doesn't always mean that you are protected. And I want to share a personal story of when I entered the dental world as a hygienist years ago. I worked in a practice that did not have full time hygiene for me.
So it was a rural area. And so I would go to two different offices, sometimes three on Fridays that were within 20, 30 minutes of each other. The interesting thing about this story is because I was filling in at different offices,
we became familiar with this patient who would go to one office one week. He's in pain, swelling, wouldn't get treatment for the abscess. And then a several days later, he'd go down the road 20, 30 minutes down the road. What happened is I started seeing his face
and sometimes he'd have a different last name or a different first name. His nickname was Jim or Bob. And so we all talk about job hoppers. Well, this patient was actually what we started referring to as a pill hopper.
And when we started figuring out, I was like, oh, I just saw him a couple of days ago down the road at the other practice. So we were able to monitor that. And even though we could do prescriptions for him and now it's digital,
that doesn't always mean that you are completely protected. Here's another scenario. A patient can come in and you give due treatment. You treat that root canal, he's come in, you've given him pain, pain medicine several times after he leaves and he's in pain.
He, his car gets broken into the prescriptions lost or him and his wife get in a fight. Neighbors come over, kids take the prescription out of their bathroom. I had that excuse several times. Oh, the neighbor's kids came over
and I had just filled my bucket in and they took the bottle and I don't know what happened to it. So there's so many external things that can happen here. What you really need to know is, OK, I filed the police report and then they tell you, but I need the prescription replaced, you know,
all of this chaos happened in my life. I need you to help me out, doctor. We are in the helping business and we don't want to see people continually in pain. So we definitely to know, like, is this a lost opioid situation or is this somebody who is making the rounds being a pill hopper?
The part of this, too, is that a police report looks official. The police have no idea what was inside that car. What is reported as lost in a police report is whatever the victim says is lost. You know, I remember when I was in the army at any time there was a vehicle accident.
What the guys in supply used to do was they would look at their inventory. They would see whatever they were missing and they would say, well, that was in the truck that rolled over as a way of covering their inventory shortages. In fact, they did it once to the point
where somebody actually sat and calculated the weight of stuff that would have been in that truck. And they said, well, of course, it rolled over. You know, it has a capacity of two and a half tons. And, you know, according to your records, there were eight tons of gear in it.
The fact that somebody hands you a police report that says their car was broken into and their time on all three prescriptions were stolen only means that somebody went to the police and gave that story. It doesn't mean that it happened.
So we need to be careful when we get stories from people want a prescription replaced for whatever reason. This one happened to a client of mine. And he got a call at home one night and the caller said, I'm so and so I'm a dentist in Oregon, which was about 3,000 miles away from where my client was.
And my wife is dying of cancer and she and I are taking one last trip in our motor home before she passes away. And we have this problem that I hope you can help us with. She's running a little bit low on a couple of her medications. You know, if I was in Oregon, I would just renew them myself.
But I'm here in a different state and this state won't won't honor my prescription. So I'm just wondering if as a as a brother dentist, you could help me out of this. And my client was touched by this story. I mean, it all sounded very sad.
And of course, he wanted to help. But it goes back to what Amber said a few minutes ago about, you know, as a as a dentist or somebody who works in a practice, inherently, you're a healer. So my client wanted to help out. And and the the dentist from Oregon,
you know, they had they had agreed on a place to meet. And something in the back of my my client's mind just bothered him a little bit. And what he did and this is the advantage of being on the East Coast and having a three hour time advantage over Oregon. He formed the Oregon State Dental Board, which was still open.
And you know how this is going to end. He found out that there was no personal license in Oregon with that name. So when when he went to the meeting place and the guy did show up in an RV and his wife really didn't look to be in the best of health, but the police were there to grab. But you can see how this story would work.
And it pulled at my client's heartstrings and, you know, he he felt the need to help another member of the fraternity. And like I say, he just had this little voice in the back of his head that thankfully he listened to. So how do you protect yourself from that mother who wants Vicodin is screaming for Vicodin
because her 12 year old child got his braces on today and he's in so much pain, he needs some extra drugs, right? Yeah, I've heard that one, too. Number one, it's pretty simple. Don't prescribe drugs for people that are not your patients. Now, that's never happened to me.
I've never had like a dentist say, hey, can I give you some pain medication? But Dave, you've had that happen, haven't you? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, my my own dentist once or twice, you know, offered I had a broken toe or something, you know, and I'm sitting in his chair and I'm obviously not happy.
And and my own dentist said to me once, you know, can I fix you up with with some pain killers? Well, that was awfully kind of him. It was it was very kind of him and he was only trying to help. And, you know, we've known each other for 30 years. However, there's a danger there, isn't there? Yeah.
You know, one thing that I do love about that story is it illustrates what we always say about people in dentistry being healers, right? I mean, they have such a precious heart and their healers and they don't want anybody to be in pain for any reason and they just want to help, you know, kind of like Amber was saying.
But I'm sorry, I'm kind of off point. Anyway, so don't prescribe. by medication to someone A who is not your patient and B for any other reason other than dental. Secondly, if you're gonna prescribe an narcotic, always consult your state, your state maintaining
or your state monitoring website. I know, I am a member of a lot of groups on Facebook and it seems like there are several stories every single day where someone is explaining some scam that has been brought against them for medication and the monitoring website kind of saved them
from getting involved in that. And then patient ID for controlled substances. We've talked in the past there are webinars about, how many of you actually ask for a driver's license for your new patients that come in so that they can prove or that you can know and they prove who they are
or actually who they say they are. I think I said that right. Anyway, so again, if you're not asking for a valid identification for the patient or from the patient and of course again, if it's a patient of record that you've been seeing
for years and you know by face and by name, that's not really what we're talking about. We're really talking about the new patients that come in or maybe somebody that's come in three or four times and you don't have a copy of the driver's license so you don't really know if they are who they say they are.
I'll give a slight descending opinion here. If it were me, Wendy, I would just check everybody and even if it's somebody I've known for 20 years I would say, I know that you've been a patient here forever and of course I know you but just as a matter of policy,
we always check ID when we prescribe controlled substances. If you do it for everybody, you don't have to think about it, you don't have to make that decision about do I really know who this person is or not. My sister-in-law is a family doctor and she almost got burned by this
and what happened was that there was somebody in her waiting room who heard the receptionist called the name of another patient who was in the waiting and the first person realized that the two of them looked fairly similar so and this person was already
on the prescription monitoring programs watch list. So next time she came back to see my sister-in-law she booked in as the other patient and walked away with a prescription and eventually it got caught but I just wouldn't take anything for granted here.
If I'm gonna give narcotics, I just wanna see your driver's license and if you do that for everybody, you can't go wrong. But Wendy's right too, there's more of a purpose to be served by doing that for some people than for others.
So everybody likes the concept of having nice teeth. What not everybody thinks is that they should pay for it. So sometimes people try to get free dentistry and I'll tell you a story that happened to one of my clients. It starts with a patient
who I'm gonna call Mr. Smiles. And Mr. Smiles had been a patient of this practice for a very long time and one day he brought his wife in who had not been a patient of the practice and she needed a fair amount of work.
So the practice started doing it. It all got built to her husband's insurance and the insurance didn't pay. And the practice followed up with the insurance company and eventually it went to somebody at the insurance company and what they said basically was
we can't tell you how we know this but the person who was treated in your practice was not Mrs. Smiles. So audience members, what do you think's going on here? Make your hypothesis and think about it. Well, one more thing I should tell you
after they got this answer from the insurance company the practice called Mr. Smiles. Mr. Smiles was back into practice within an hour with cash to pay the bill. So now what do you think's happened? Well, the answer is Mr. Smiles had both a wife
and a girlfriend and as it turned out his wife wasn't using his dental plan. She was dental phobic and Mr. Smiles thought to himself well, if my wife isn't using it really my girlfriend couldn't. So it was his girlfriend showing up
pretending to be his wife. And I'm guessing that the insurance company called Mrs. Smiles to do some kind of verification and the real Mrs. Smiles said now I haven't been to the dentist in nine years and that's why they didn't pay the claim.
So what do we do about this Amber? Well, Dave, when you tell that story it makes me think of what we're all familiar with now like match.com or Tinder where you swipe left or swipe right, you know what you see isn't what you get.
I have no experience with this but okay. Yeah, I mean you don't wanna go on a blind date with a patient after you meet them. I mean that's what that brings to my mind like basically they went on a blind date and said, oh looks good, right?
So I always tell offices verify what you see we always say trust but verify we're not on the blind dating site so we gotta overlook that. So you want visual images to identify your patient and responsible parties.
Like you're saying Mr. Smiles we need to make sure that Mr. Smiles is who he says he is as well. Majority of software nowadays will support image capturing for this. In addition to a driver's license
I always recommend an insurance card as well if you have a patient that has insurance if your software does not support taking a photo of that you can usually scan it into that or there's third party companies now that opt for that.
So that's the first thing I wanna visually see that what I see when you hand it to me and what I have in your file is what I'm getting, right? Cause we're going on that first blind date with our patient. Then the next thing that I've seen happen
even in pharmacies, medical practices all sorts of things is excuse me, Mr. Harris do you still live at 1901 Main Street Boulevard? And of course what's your answer going to be? Well, yes I do cause that's what we're looking for.
So the key here is ask open-ended questions make the patient fill in the blanks so that as you were visually looking at who they said they were they're telling that to you you're making them fill in the blanks
and properly give you the correct answer. So that's a great screening process for all of your team members moving forward. So I definitely think that is really, really important. Here's another thing in dentistry we're all about giving and sharing
but you've got to make sure what your patient is also seeing on the screen cause you're looking at the patient in front of them their driver's license that you just had pulled up you want to make sure that what you just had the next person doesn't see.
So make sure your monitors are secure so that you don't have any other people that say oh I saw so and so lives here and I heard what insurance he's got I can definitely tap into that. So make sure that's not visible.
And here's a key thing for me. Like I said earlier so patients can't also access their records when you walk away from a system make sure it automatically logs off. So similar to your smartphone
we all have pass codes, face codes, thumb prints majority of smartphones now are going to have an automatic log off so that someone can't walk by pick up your phone and get into your information no different in your dental practice
make sure that it's going to time out so that it is more protected and the people who are supposed to access it and supposed to verify and help minimize these external threats can do so accordingly.
Let me show you guys something. Whoops, find the right level. That's called an every key they cost about $40. And it hooks by Bluetooth to my computer when I get more than eight feet away from my computer
as long as the every keys in my pocket so when I walk eight feet away my computer logs when I come back within the eight feet my computer unlocks and it's so simple
because I don't even have to think about it. So there are increasingly there are technological solutions to this problem as well. You know, the danger is when you count on somebody to have to remember to log out of their computer
when they walk away from it I mean, that's it's easy to forget. And I think in a lot of practices without pointing fingers the worst offenders probably have the title doctor in front of their name
and they're sitting there at their work station and then they get called in to do a hygiene check and they don't want to keep the hygienist waiting because Amber, we all know what cranky pants they can be. So they end up not taking the 10 seconds to log out. So maybe technology can help you.
I'm just go back to the open ended questions thing for a minute where I live the hospitals are terrible at this, you know if you go into the emergency room here and you say your name is David Harris the next question they will ask you is
you know, is your date of birth and then they'll give it to you and is your address and they'll give it to you. And as Amber says, if you're an identity theft all you have to do is just keep saying yes as opposed to the hospital saying
Mr. Harris, what's your date of birth and making sure that it lines up with what's in their computer and asking what's your address. And if I give something that's different than what's on file
it looks like we may have a former address where did you live before your current address? You know, they just play right into it. And as Amber says in your dental practice you need that when somebody comes in who's a patient
and you're updating their address information just ask them the question what's your address and compare it with what's on the screen. I know we wanna do the closed ended thing cause it's quicker
but it's also a bit dangerous. So we have all this information in our computer system what could someone do with someone's full name their social security number their address their birthday
and also their insurance information. Well, number one the street value of a credit card number is $5 but check this out the street value of insurance information is $50.
You know, a lot of people think you know that it's crazy that somebody would wanna steal someone else's insurance information but I actually have a good friend who is an orthodontist in California
and she was working on a patient that was going to have to have orthomathic surgery. Well, you know, in ortho you go through several months of orthodontic treatment and you position the teeth and then you get ready to have the surgery.
When the patient went to have the surgery the surgery she went to the hospital but the surgery was declined and then the patient just disappeared. And my friend found out that her patient her orthodontic, her legitimate orthodontic patient
had used someone else's insurance identification and someone else's insurance policy to have orthodontic surgery done. I mean, so we think we're immune to that. I mean, you think, well who in orthodontics would wanna steal somebody's insurance information
and why that doesn't make any sense but it really does if you consider the financial value of it. Talk about bulk information theft. And I see, oh, where did it go? Gary, Gary, where are you at?
Yeah, Gary Solomon's on with us tonight. So, yeah, like I feel inferior even talking about this right now because this is gonna be, I mean, he's gonna blow us away with his information next month on this
but when we talk about bulk information theft we're talking about stuff that ends up on the dark web and all that, we don't wanna go there but here's some information that is important for you to know. Number one, if there is a HIPAA violation
or a HIPAA breach of your software, there are very heavy fines. The fines are broken down into tears which I won't bore you to tears. That was like an amber corny joke. Are you proud of me, Amber?
I like it. Anyway, yeah, no, seriously, it's broken down into four tears and it's based on how deliberate or unintentional the breach was but needless to say there are some hefty fines that go along with it
as well depending on the number of patients which the breach occurs. I mean, how many of you have at least 500 patients in your database, right? I would venture to say every single one of you, every single practice has at least,
you go through the entire span, you're active patients, you're inactive patients, you've got more than 500 patients. Well, if you have a HIPAA breach of your data and more than 500 patient accounts are affected, not only do you have to notify those patients
by either US mail or email, you also have to know, you also have to notify the media. Can you imagine what that would do to the reputation of your practice for patients for it to be on the news that you had a data breach
or being print in your local newspaper that you had a data breach? Those patients, if there is a data breach, they also have to be notified within 60 days or you could incur more penalties. And also most of data breaches come from malicious outsiders
through email, through spam, right? So I'm so excited, Gary is with us tonight. Gary, I'm sorry I can't put you on screen and you can address this more thoroughly than I can, but we're counting on you to do it next month. Hey, or Wendy, one thing that this that made me think of
is we all live on the internet now. So think about that. If the media gets ahold of that story and your name and your practice is the front line of that story, think about your five-star reviews after that day.
I mean, that's really going to hurt you. Yeah, it absolutely is. I mean, patients want to know that their information will be safer. This is one thing that I saw with one of our clients and the office manager got a call
from somebody who said they were with Delta Dental. And he had a fairly convincing story. He's had a bunch of claims got miscoded. So claims that were submitted from this office got coded to another office. And they're going to fix it,
but it'll take a couple of weeks because basically they have to manually go through a whole bunch of clients. And until that is done, we have to put both the offices on payment. So no more money coming from Delta.
And the next thing that Mark Stevens said is, you can help us here. If you can give us all the claim forms that were submitted to us from one date to another, then we can correct this much faster than if we have to go in
and hunt all these errant claims out manually. So at this point, the poor office manager, I mean, the last thing she wants to do is go to her doctor and say, you know what Delta Dental screwed up and you know, there are our biggest insurer
and they're not going to pay us any money for goodness knows how long. I mean, that was something she really didn't want to share with the doctor. But then Mark Stevens said something that kind of got her a little concerned
when he said, we'll send a courier to your office at 2 p.m. to pick this stuff up. And that was the point when she got a little bit spooked and she called me and I said, no way. There's no way that this happened. And, you know, we phoned Delta and you know,
it hadn't happened and they said, and if it did, this is not how it would be corrected. So, you know, if this office manager had gone along with what this guy named Mark Stevens or identifying himself as Mark Stevens was, if she'd gone along with it,
I mean, Mark Stevens would have gotten, you know, probably 300 insurance clients, all of which have all those things that Wendy talked about, you know, the name of the claimant, what treatment they had, what their policy number was,
all those things would be on those clients. And at street value of $50 each, that's a lot of money. So we're talking, we've talked about these external threats and how to think about all this. And it does, it seems like a lot coming at you in many different ways.
As you've heard me say in previous webinars, dentistry is a lot of moving parts. Our practices are busy. We have patients coming in with all different types of needs, smile makeovers, we're trying to make patients happy
and comfortable, wanna come back and see us. This one down the hall is in pain. The next one maybe has high anxiety. So we have to really adjust and be ready for different situations. And this is what makes dentistry a very attractive target
because they know we're fast paced and we are a service-based trying to help people business. So that's one of the main things we have to remember. But our focus on helping people can make you feel vulnerable. One of the main things we wanna do
is help you be more safeguarded so that when you go on that blind date with the patient, it's an end result. You're not dealing with like a messy divorce or a messy separation at the end of it, right? So that's why we wanted to share
that information with you. So definitely knowing the details, having a little bit of slow breathing meditation, writing down all the things you need to do in your practice for all of these external threats as well as the internal threats is definitely key.
We have a customized package for you that I'm very passionate about. Our whole team at ProsperDent, we pride ourselves in trying to safeguard our clients. So our office protection system would be definitely something for you to look into
because we look at all these 25 hotspots internally and externally in your office. Awesome. Well, it's that time when we turn it over to the audience and allow them to ask some questions. Just if you have a question,
type it into the question box in Zoom. Wendy and Amber are gonna start feeding them to me in a minute and just while you're doing that, we'll mention a couple of things. First of all, we love to hear from you and there's how to reach us
if you have concerns about embezzlement in your practice or as Amber says, you wanna protect yourself against internal and external threats. And we're gonna make this really attractive because from now until July 31st, we're giving anybody who calls us from this webinar
a $500 credit on essentially any ProsperDent product. So if you are thinking about doing something in your practice, now's your time. And as mentioned early on, we have two webinars left before we wrap this up. So August 19th, and we've said his name a few times,
Gary Salman is gonna be with us. And if you haven't heard Gary speak, he's awesome. I mean, he can scare the pants off you, but he's very knowledgeable. And his company's called Black Talent Security. And in a way, they're like what we are.
I mean, their niche is very narrow and they deal with IT security. They're not like your IT person who fixes your system when you can't get email. Their whole focus is security. And Gary's a great presenter.
You will learn a lot from him. And then our final, final, final session will be on September 23rd. And that one's gonna be a little bit free-mealing. And I think Wendy and Amber and I are gonna talk about some of the experiences
that we've had. So we'll see you then. As I say, if you have questions, we'll take about 15 minutes worth of them. And thank you all for being part of our audience. Well, let me just say real quick.
I've noticed Stephen, Lang and John H have had their hands raised. Their zig hands raised for a while. Stephen and John, if you have a question, if you would either put it in the chat or send it through the Q&A box,
we'll be able to answer those questions for you. I'm not sure if that was a mistake or if, but their hands have been up almost the whole time. Maybe they have to go to the bathroom, Wendy. Interested.
Maybe they have to go to the bathroom. And actually, if I can just modify something Wendy said, please put your questions in the Q&A box. We have somebody monitoring chat, but they're not really in a position to answer questions. And I see a few questions coming through in the chat.
We can't tackle them there. So if you have done that, please just copy it and paste it to the Q&A and we'll take it there. And if you have to go to the bathroom, please do it. It's really hard to sit here and concentrate
when your wisdom teeth are floating. Okay, okay, I have a question or someone has a question. What is the current level of enforcement for hippo violations? I just saw that graph today.
It's the word, the folks who do this have no sense of humor. I was looking the other day at some of the fines applied so far in 2021. The biggest fine so far this year is like $5.2 million. So that's a single company that got fined. No, there's no leniency.
There's no clemency whatsoever if you breach hippo. I mean, as Wendy said, they will look at what your intent was and a deliberate breach, obviously, is more serious than one that's inadvertent, but they will find you no matter what.
And if you commit a hippo breach and then you don't follow the proper corrective action, that's when you can expect to get hit pretty hard because now it's moved from something that's accidental to something that's willful. So we don't wanna be there.
Okay, and then someone wants to know the name of the lock key to the computer. I guess the one you held up. Oh, it's called an every key, E-V-E-R-O-Y-K-E-Y. There may be other ones as well. That's the one I use.
And it's great, it works with all my devices. So my laptop and my desktop and so on. And it's just this little gizmo that fits on my key ring and you plug it in about once a week to charge it and it just connects via Bluetooth to your computer. So if you're using a desktop computer,
most desktops don't have a built-in Bluetooth chip so you need a chip as well. But I priced these the other day and they were $44 with free delivery. So it's a great little gizmo and it just stays with me on my key chain.
Okay, and then Valerie wants you to elaborate on the office protection system. Amber, do you wanna tackle that one or do you want me to? You go ahead and tackle it. Okay, Ops is a product that we have where we take a look at your control systems
and I'm using this in the broadest sense. So everything from looking at how you background check people before you hire them to the security settings in your practice management software to what the doctor's review process is at the end of the day.
So we crawl over a lot of areas and the idea is to find the weaknesses. And a lot of them, of course, are oriented towards embezzlement but we also deal with issues like appropriate computer usage and security of information and things like that.
So the idea is to help you find areas where you're vulnerable and then correct them. And Amber does a fair amount of work in that department as does one of our other team members Debbie Long. And it's a great way to fix some things that are broken in your practice.
And the corrections, I think I'd say, Amber are fairly gentle. In other words, it's not like, it's not like this is gonna turn your practice on its ear. It's simply there to find the things that an embezzler and IT thief could explain.
Yes, and the thing I love about what we offer with Office Protection System is we look at your practice as its own individual masterpiece. And then we look at the areas that you're vulnerable and we customize,
okay, here's how your practice is set up. Here's some weaknesses or vulnerabilities that we see that could happen. And so we like to do that one-on-one interaction with you because a lot of people have, oh, this is the safest way, but every practice is different.
Every software is different. The services you provide may be different because you were a specialist. So we really customize it and really go in depth into the type of software you have, the type of services you provide,
how you take payments, how you hire all of those things. Yeah, it's a great product and we'd love to chat with you one-on-one if you have more questions. Okay, Valerie has another question and she said, or she writes,
I was told that we could not keep copies of driver's license. There's nothing I'm aware of there. Certainly when you're hiring people, and that's a situation where we also encourage you to check somebody's driver's license. In that case, the applicant needs to put their thumb
or a post-it note or something over a few things like their date of birth because when you're hiring, of course you can't discriminate by it because of age. So asking somebody's date of birth is sort of in the no-fly zone.
There's no such restriction with patients. There's nothing, there may be a state law somewhere. Certainly there's nothing federal and I can't think of any state law in any state I'm familiar with that prevents you from keeping a driver's license
or any other identification on file for a patient. Yeah, someone else wrote that they scan the IDs. Yeah, that's- They're scanning it into like a document or- Some practice management software has a specific place in the patient's master file where you can capture that.
Also the other thing that a lot of practice management software will permit you to do is take a webcam picture of the patient. So you actually have on their, in their electronic chart, you have their picture. All good ideas.
I mean, identity theft happens because somebody shows up as somebody else. And if you know who one of them is, you can solve it. And just on that, I saw a question about the Cure's database and whether that solves prescription abuse kinds of issues.
It would if everybody would follow the rules. So no database on the planet is gonna flag me if I show up at five different dental practices and I give a different name in each place and I get an narcotics prescription. And I go to five different drug stores
using those names and get them felt. In other words, if I kept using my own name and doing it, yes, that would get me caught. Thieves, even ones who are drug addicts are not stupid. They understand the system in which they function and they know they have to use different names.
One medical doctor here where I live got caught. She was a user and she was phoning in prescriptions to a pharmacy for a specific patient. And then she would go to the pharmacy and pick them up and she would say to the pharmacist, the patient's an invalid, he can't get here.
So I'm on my way to see him now and I'm gonna take the drugs to him. And eventually she got caught because the prescription monitoring program realized that this one patient got 1,200 opioid pills in a year which is a lot under pretty much any set of assumptions.
Had the doctor been a little more artistic about this and maybe used different patients in different pharmacies and stuff she probably could have continued it. But databases have a basic limitation. They assume that people are showing up
under their own name and the addicts may not be quite that cooperative. I have a question that's kind of interesting. Why is an insurance card have more street value than a credit card? What are your opinions on that?
Yeah, that's a great question. And a couple of things there. First of all, the anti-fraud safeguards built into credit cards are pretty good. In other words, for example, your credit card company knows approximately
how much gas your car takes. And if you drive a hybrid and it's normally $30 to fill it and suddenly you're spending $200 at the gas pump two or three times, your credit card company will flag that.
And if they know that you live in Houston and they suddenly see a whole bunch of purchases in Oklahoma City, and at the same time, they see a whole lot of gas and you're not somebody who typically travels or rents cars, your card will get blocked
and they'll call you and just double check that you are in fact in Oklahoma City driving an earth record 9,000. The sophistication of the insurance companies is much, much, much less. Some of this stuff, and Wendy and Amber
have certainly seen it at S.I., some of the stuff that goes through insurance companies. We saw, I saw somebody once who was billing an insurance company for work that wasn't being done and pocketing the money.
And they build more than 12 root canals in a single month on a 14 year old patient. Now, everybody who's in the audience who has a connection to dentistry knows that there is no such thing as pediatric quadrant endodontics. There's just not a 14 year old on the planet
who needs a dozen endos. But the insurance company didn't catch that, we did. So they're a little bit unsophisticated and the other thing is people need fairly expensive treatment. I mean, if you need a kidney and you don't have insurance,
that's $70,000. And if you had a working insurance, the working set of insurance information and you can get that $70,000 kidney transplant covered under somebody else's insurance, that has a lot of value.
I mean, nobody can squeeze that kind of money on a credit card. So, yeah, working credit cards have value, but it's limited. Working insurance is worth a lot more. So great question.
Okay, Patrick wants to know if we're gonna be at the ADA meeting in Houston next. Good question. A little off our planning horizon, but yeah, we likely will have somebody there. And if we're not at that,
we'll probably be in Houston for some other reason in the next year, Patrick. And if you're around, yeah, love to chat. You can always see our upcoming speaking schedule on our website. So if you go to prosperity.com
and then follow the menus through to speaking, you can find out where we are because all of our speaking goes into the calendar. And can I do a shameless plug? Who's gonna say no to you, Wendy? Who's gonna say no?
But I hate shameless plugs, but anyway, this made me think of it, because I've been troubled. Well, let me do my shameless plug first. I think it's very generous of you to offer a $500 credit,
a $500 credit toward prosperity and services because I know we normally don't do that. I mean, we normally don't do any kind of discounting whatsoever. But I just, what made me think of that, and I'm actually kind of grateful that you're doing that. I'm coming from a grateful heart
is I had to deliver some bad news to one of my clients today who when we had the initial examiners initial interview, he was 100% sure, let me take that back. He was 99% sure that nothing was happening in his practice. And I just kept telling him,
well, as a certified broad examiner, I go into the examination and I'm neutral. I don't have any opinion if it's happening or not. I look at transactions and the results of those transactions are either the money goes into your bank account
or the money does not. And that's what I look at. So anyway, I had that difficult conversation with him this morning and we're up to about $80,000 so far. And it's so typical of what we usually say.
There are three methodologies that she's using and it's up to 80. And we're not even through with the 12 month investigation time period yet. So what's our average around 100, 110? It'll be past that by the time we get up there.
Anyway, my whole thing was to say thank you, David. I know we don't normally do that. We don't normally discount. So that's kind of you to offer our live web. We appreciate our audience. It's been such a privilege to be able to share time
with you guys over the past 15 months and it's a chance for us to get back. So we wanna thank all of you tonight and every night for hanging out with us. And we'll see you back on August 19th. Wendy Emmer, thank you very much.
You guys always make this fun. And it just wouldn't be the same without a Wendy emotional explosion at some point in the session and just love those. Thank you all very much. I'll also thank our colleague Sheila O'Driscoll
who's the silent one on chat with us. And we'll see you guys all in a little under a month. Thanks. Good night, everybody. Hi, love you guys. Hi, thanks for attending.
Thanks for listening to the Dental Practice Owners Podcast brought to you by Prosperident. You can contact Prosperident through its website www.prosperident.com or by calling 888-398-2327. If you have questions about this podcast,
if you would like to discuss your practice or there is a topic you would like to see in a future podcast, we would love to hear from you. Amber, Wendy and David will be back soon with another episode.
[0:00] you are listening to the dental practice owners podcast brought to you by prosperity from our unique perspective as dentistry's embezzlement experts prosperity's team can bring you the information that is important to practice owners the dental practice owners podcast brings you strategies tools and tips that you can use and dentistry's thought leaders as guests so sit back relax and listen to prosperity's amber Weber Wendy Askins and David Harris talk
[0:31] about the issues that matter to you well hi everybody I'd like to welcome you all I'm David Harris and my colleagues Amber whether Weber and Wendy Askins are with me welcome it's Thursday night and that's webinar night and it's the curtain call for us we have two more webinars and after that we're done so on August 19th we've got a very special event it's called cyber security in your dental practice and we're gonna welcome a terrific guest with us his name is
[1:09] Gary Salomon Gary is an incredibly specialized walking encyclopedia on cyber security and and he will have a lot you can take away and then we're doing the finale and the finale is on September 23rd and it's called everything important about embezzlement in one hour and I think it's gonna be a lot of the three of us telling some more stories why are we wrapping up the webinars a couple reasons the big one is we started this a little over a year ago
[1:39] when you were all sitting at home bored because COVID had shut down your practices and now everybody's back to work and they've they've got some things to do and to catch up on the time that they miss so everybody's getting busier and we're getting busier and we're gonna move on to other projects but we're we're we're certainly not gonna vanish just a reminder that you are already registered for both of those webinars so there's nothing you have
[2:06] to do you'll get a confirmation email in a day or so that just reminds you about the next one but no action needed on your part whatsoever and one of the reasons that we're shutting down the webinars is that live speaking is getting busier for us and if you're wondering where we're speaking you can go to that page on our website and see some of the places that we'll be speaking in the next six months I will probably travel 50 or 60 thousand
[2:36] miles and I'll be at Chicago midwinter and on the west coast several times and speaking of a few times in Texas lots and lots of places you can see us and finally don't forget that there is CE credit available tonight thanks to our good friends at Altura Periodontics in Colorado the way that you get the CE is that there's an email that comes out around when we're gonna finish up tonight in about an hour and 15 minutes and there's a button there
[3:07] that you click and you just fill in a very quick form and you'll have your CE certificate within about five minutes all right so sticking with our theme for our curtain call series keep prevent your practice from overheating tonight we really wanted to focus on the external threats that maybe you're overlooking areas that we're aware of that could cause a loss to the practice but maybe we're not thinking about the diverse patterns that can
[3:35] exist within these external threats we'll be focusing in these areas tonight but we want to take time to share personal stories experience and insight into areas that you could be unknowingly overlooking such as burglary I mean we all have heard of you know breaking and entering how vulnerable are you in your practice to this happening other thing that we often overlook because we're constantly helping people in pain medication scams this is something
[4:03] that is becoming more and more prevalent not just in dentistry but in other areas of medicine as well so that's an external threat that we don't always think about and then identity and information theft what you see sometimes with the patient may not always be what you get so tonight we were really wanted to focus on those areas that maybe coming at you that maybe you've just haven't thought about and we don't want you to be
[4:28] overlooking so like Amber was saying tonight we're going to ask you to step outside of your good nature and your good heart once again and you know I think we we go into our offices or even into our homes and we look around and we're so used to seeing everything there all the time that we don't realize that people outside of us see something very different than we do so for example what could you have in your practice or in your building that
[4:58] somebody might want to steal well number one you're a business so how about cash and you know we always talk about cash technically that includes checks too because checks can be stolen and deposited or cashed how about narcotics after all you do work in a doctor's office or you are a doctor we have expensive computer equipment in there with big windows in the front or back of our office so everyone can see how
[5:27] beautiful our offices and all that beautiful equipment in there all the computer equipment and then one thing that we always overlook is the dark side value of PHI that we have our hands on so we're going to talk about some of those things tonight as well. Awesome and one thing I wanted to mention you've all got the no Amber Weber over the last year and a half herself the practice that she's
[5:58] gotten here speaking and doing webinars has helped her she entered a speaking competition this is probably the most prestigious speaking competition in dentistry and I am so proud to say that she was the runner-up and that was just fantastic so you know she has not been wasting her time here whatsoever and you're going to see a lot more of Amber on podiums.
[6:22] What I'm going to talk about first is physical security and I'll mention that I had a brief career in my teams breaking into houses and still when my neighbors get locked out of their house you know I'm the guy they come to see because they they think I can probably get them in and a lot of burglary is easy to stop with relatively basic solutions and if you see the picture on the screen right now
[6:47] that's the front door of a dental office and if you look at it you'll notice that the hinges are on the outside of the door which is pretty common because in a lot of public buildings the rule is that the doors must open outward. Now to a thief if I want to get in this door all I need is a hammer and a screwdriver and I pop the pins out of those hinges and then the whole door comes off.
[7:11] So if tomorrow or whenever you're in your practice next if you happen to notice that your hinges are on the outside of the door get your landlord or if you own the building hire somebody to put in what are called set screws and set screws will just make it so that somebody can't lift those pins from the hinges. It's it's probably a $25 solution to the problem but have a look at your your doors
[7:40] see if any do have external hinges. What you see here is called an anti-jimmy plate. So a lot of locks and you've probably all noticed this if you look at the lock of a door it has a tongue that goes from the door into the wall and the tongue is curved and it's curved so that it slides properly
[8:04] into the into the door into the wall or the frame. But also if that curve faces outward which it normally does then somebody with a credit card or or something similar can often kind of push the push the tongue in and open the door. So this plate that's screwed on there will stop that. The other thing is, let me go one more, yeah the the thing there that looks
[8:33] kind of like a pistol in the middle, that's a that's a type of lock pick it's called a bump pick and originally lock picking was a fairly difficult art and it took a long time to learn. These bump picks which you can buy on the internet, you know a teenager can figure out how to do it in about 10 minutes and and can pick almost any lock.
[8:57] So the other option is get rid of get rid of something that takes a key you know I have a keyless entry pad either with a pass card or a code and that will stop the people who want to use things like these bump picks. One of the other weaknesses that a lot of practices have and actually a lot of your houses too I mean everything I'm saying here also applies to your house
[9:26] is they have a sliding glass door and the glass door has a lock which is fairly sturdy but if you look at the other door the one that doesn't slide normally they're screwed to the wall with about two screws and it's generally not very hard to pop those screws out and then effectively turn the non sliding door into the sliding one.
[9:50] So what you see there is a locking bar and it it will stop somebody from from just popping the lock and and getting access to that door. So all these things are are relatively inexpensive but when you when you next see your office take a look around and you'll see some things probably that you haven't before. Just continuing that theme
[10:23] probably the best thing you can do to deter burglars is alarm stickers. When I got the alarm installed in my house the guy kind of joked with me and he said you know what basically we charge $1,800 to put the stickers around your house and then we throw in the alarm system for free. So if I'm a thief and I can choose between breaking into two businesses and
[10:46] one has an alarm system and one doesn't every single time I'm going to go at the business that does not have the alarm stickers. So have the alarm first of all and second put stickers up at every door and every window you want anybody who's conflicting breaking in to know that when they do there's going to be a very loud noise and the police will be there in a few minutes.
[11:13] Take a look at your exterior lighting. If a thief is going to pick a lock if they're going to jimmy a door if they're going to take the hinge pins out they want to do that somewhere where they think they won't be observed. So you know if the front of your practice faces the street but there's a there's a back entrance and every practice really has two entrances. If
[11:37] the back entrance is dark that's where I'm going to go. If you put up exterior lighting and the best stuff is motion sensors you know stuff that's activated by motion. If you do that then a burglar is going to find sitting there and trying to pick your lock you know while bathed in light that's coming down from above being a lot less comfortable.
[12:04] If there is somewhere that somebody can try to get access and not be observed that needs to be a door that you really need to reinforce our window. So that's when there might be multiple locks on the door. Make sure that it's a it's a steel door or a steel clad door and not simply a wood one. You know when you're when you're looking at places to reinforce
[12:31] the one where somebody can sit there for 10 minutes and do whatever they're going to do to gain access is one you really need to work on. And the other thing is most of your practices probably don't have narcotics or or any appreciable quantity of them but thieves don't necessarily know that. So make very sure that you have a known narcotics sign whether it's true or not it doesn't matter just on your front door you need a sign that says
[13:00] simply there are no narcotics on the premises. The thing about burglary is that it is opportunistic and what I mean by that is if I'm going to rob somewhere I've got a choice of probably five or ten or fifty places I could rob and if I'm a thief I'm going to go with the one that I perceive is going to be the easiest and is going to pose the least danger to me. So it's kind of like what somebody said to me when we were hiking in the woods you know
[13:27] if a bear chases us I don't have to be faster than the bear David I just have to be faster than you and I'll say exactly the same thing all you have to do is convince a thief that it's easier to rob the business next door and by the way that's one of the key differences between burglary and investment you know when we when we think about burglars it's easy for them to change victims and this kind of thinking what's on your screen will do that. You've heard us say in previous webinars that the same kind of thinking typically doesn't work for
[14:04] embezzlers why because for an embezzler to change victims is a lot bigger undertaking than a snatch and grab person if an embezzler is going to change victims they've got to quit their job somewhere get hired somewhere else and then invest enough time to understand systems and of course cameras are a really good idea as a deterrent you know nobody nobody wants to sit there in full view of a camera for five minutes while they pick your lock. Now that's not the only thing you need to be concerned about there
[14:42] are also people who come into your office for legitimate reasons and or apparently legitimate reasons and do bad things let's watch this video and then Wendy's going to tell you a little more. Tonight a break room bandit hits up a granite bay dental office snatching wallets cell phones and all the thefts are caught on surveillance. Tonight investigators are hoping somebody knows who this personature is and they're looking into whether she may have hit another business as well KCRI3's Dana Griffin is checking the search. Take a good look at this woman. I thought it
[15:12] was safe I honestly didn't think that anybody would be bold enough to come in and do that. She walked into the William Gilbert dentist's office in granite bay last Wednesday asking to use the restroom. It seems like she was very comfortable with the office like she knew where the bathroom was she knew where she was going. The employee said sure but instead of going to the restroom she walked into the staff lounge and over here is where our employee lockers are where she helped herself. And minutes later video shows her running out of the back door
[15:39] with a purse filled with wallets cell phones car keys and a pair of sunglasses. I worked so hard for my stuff and just three minutes that it took her to come through the front door out the back to take all of our stuff. Three days later that woman shows up here in Zackerville to the Blake Austin Beauty Academy. She's wearing the same exact clothes the way her hair is and then I really looked and I didn't really hit me until you know my co-worker said Vanessa are those your glasses and I really looked and was like
[16:06] yes those are my glasses. One thing I absolutely love about what we do is that you cannot make this stuff up.
[16:24] I've seen that clip several times and it just makes me laugh. I mean the situation is not funny but I mean the nerve of people. So let's talk about people, visitors to your office that are supposed to be there and those that are there for the various reasons. Number one as you saw on the video previously their whole entire office was on camera and I love that. I hear a lot of staff members saying you know I don't want my doctor watching me 24 hours a day or my doctor wants to put cameras up in the office just so he or she can watch what I'm doing and make sure
[17:07] I'm working and make sure I'm not making personal calls. Let me tell you that is not true at all and actually I had a situation when I worked as the managing director of a large group practice that was like absolutely wacko. A patient had come in and accused one of the ladies at the front desk of cursing her out and throwing a set of keys at her. So of course the complaint ended up with me and I said let me review the video and guess what it was the exact opposite of what that patient said. It was the patient
[17:52] that was attacking the staff member calling the staff member names throwing keys at the staff member. So the staff member of course was exonerated and the patient was released. So internal cameras great idea. Combination locks on the back doors of your building. Again Amber told you we had a ton of these stories. I mean you work in a dental office and my goodness you just see the craziest things. I worked in an office where it had a clinic at the first part of the building and then the backside of the building kind of out of sight
[18:27] was where the corporate offices were. I was sitting in my office one day and my office was right by one of the back doors. I'm sitting in my office one day and I happened to look up and I see someone walking through the back door and I thought well that's interesting she must be here for lunch when the staff members something like that. Well I kind of got suspicious and so I came out of my office and I stood at the end of the hall and I watched this woman meander in and out of different offices and different areas of our corporate offices because pretty much everyone
[19:02] was in the clinic working. So there weren't that many people back there and then I saw her peek in the door frame of the staff lounge and then she walked in and I thought okay no way this is happening. So I went and I asked her I said man can I help you and she said no and I said what are you doing in here and she said I'm just looking around and I said well let me take you to the clinic is it or one of our patients are you one of our patients or possibly one of your children are patients no I'm just looking around. So she had just driven up to the back parking
[19:42] lot opened the door and walked right in. So we added these combination locks you know where you just put in your code on every door which was not monitored like in the clinic and that was a huge help. We know that we or we should be escorting patients back to their seats when it's their turn to enter into the clinic area but how about strangers that just walk in like this woman this crazy woman did in the other video you know how a stranger just walks in and says can I go to the bathroom we just say oh yeah go ahead and go on back right. So let's
[20:18] make it a try to make it a point to escort everyone that comes into our door if they're going to go somewhere else in our office then let's take them there right and then non-patients anyone that's a non-patient you need to ask for an ID if they're going to be going back into your clinic I mean this could also be I mean you know I'm really talking about people that you don't know offhand like if you know a patient's parent well of course you recognize them by sight right that's not really what I'm talking about I'm actually talking about someone that comes in to
[20:53] fix your cbct machine if it's broken or in type of radiograph machine that you have ask to see their ID so that you know exactly who they are and why they're there and then escort them back to the area where they're supposed to be and I love the idea of having a visitor badge for visitors that come to your office again maintenance people whatever just so that other staff members in the building know that they can trust that person so they're not sitting at their clinical chair you know going good lord who is this person why
[21:27] are they here so I like that idea too. Yeah and more to the point somebody without a visitor badge at that point becomes needing scrutiny. Yeah it's vicious definitely yeah so this is an area that I should hate to say excites me tonight right the good old merchant terminal how many of this see this everywhere we go now from movie theaters to getting gas in your car this machine is everywhere now and when I think of the merchant terminal it makes me think of Madonna and her theme song we're living in a material world okay people we're living in a digital world
[22:08] here okay and this digital world this plastic box can easily allow a thief to turn it into that theme song we're living in a material world so this is a very very opportunistic plastic box and even though we see it everywhere and we become comfortable with it it is one of a very overlooked threat that I've seen from personal experience so first thing anybody can process a refund to their card whether they've paid with you or not they can go up and process that refund so that's one big opportunistic threat whether it's a team member or a patient that you're
[22:48] overlooking they can swipe it back in there and we're in a digital world people understand technology now so you really need to have some key pass codes and protection in here I could go get a prepaid credit card put it in your merchant terminal and if you did not have some safety systems in check then I could definitely follow that Madonna theme song that I was talking to you about now my personal experience with this when we first got into the digital world 22 years ago when I got into dentistry the pass code on most of the boxes that you get are
[23:23] still very basic you know one two three four or or two two two two and how many times do you see those not changed so definitely look at your options and make sure that that pass code is changed I've even worked in some offices and and had experience in offices that whoever is processing payments in order to process a payment your team member has to have a pass code to process a payment so that there's also a paper trail of you know how that happened who was in charge of that so definitely look at those codes and realize that
[23:57] these were in that digital world like I was saying you know Amber I think a lot of this stuff also happens when or because you know some offices the majority of dental offices are small and they maybe have one person at the front desk and that person is constantly having to leave the front desk area so that they can go take care of other stuff or run back to the clinic or ask a doctor a question and everything is not monitored there and it doesn't take long I mean the very first orthodontic office I ever worked in someone was processing the deposit at the end
[24:33] of the day and she had I mean she didn't even have them laying it was it like a two tiered counter she didn't even have it laying up on the counter it was on the lower counter but you know it was the end of the day we were busy she was ready to go home we weren't through with patients yet but we almost were and she was working to balance the deposit that day the patient comes up asks a question and there were several patients there but one patient asks a question she leaves the front desk she comes back all of the patients are gone and the money the cash
[25:04] and the checks are gone as well yeah so someone stole just stole the deposit right off of her desk well and one thing with like I said we're in a digital world definitely look into your software because another safeguard you can do with these merchant terminals is have them tied directly into your dental software if that is an option it doesn't allow external people like patients or the the strangers that you were talking about Wendy to walk in and have as easy access to those machines but definitely research that option in your software another another
[25:37] digital threat we used to live in the good old fold them over paper charts right patients couldn't really see what we did we managed all their balance what they owed us what was happening within the practice in the old paper chart but as I said we've moved into a digital world so here is a key indicator when I was a hygienist and I made this mistake make sure when you walk away to go get your doctor for the exam or doctor or assistant when you leave that patient alone in the room that that patient can't turn around and start changing
[26:13] things in their own account from entering oh I'm going to zero my account out here I I don't owe the two thousand dollars for the dental treatment I just had last week so even though they might not work within your practice management software how many of us in the audience today have a smartphone I bet we're all going to raise our hand right and how how quick are people now to learn technology and look at a screen and within you know a matter of minutes be able to do something so you want to make sure that if you do have
[26:44] to leave a patient alone in the practice that they don't have their rights and the capacity to get to that and complete something like that so we've just really got to think about that we're in a digital world now and that's a big external threat that could happen when nobody would even know it was going on so true and sorry I was trying to play a little Madonna's material world there but then my cell phone got stuck and I couldn't shut it off so what I think of when I thought about you know we're in a digital world and it's so true you
[27:15] know one of the words from Madonna so this is what got me thinking about almost 20 years ago if they don't give me proper credit I just walk away so when doctors didn't want to take credit cards and stuff when the big credit card thing was out it was like okay I don't have checker cash anymore I just walk away that is way from a long time ago for me Dave all right let's let's change gears for a minute let's think about medication theft and I'm going to show you something that just absolutely makes me scratch my head so there's a website and you can check
[27:53] this over yourself it's called streetrx.com and when you go to that website you can enter a location so I put in Denver and what this website does is it gives you the street price of various medications so if you look in Denver a five milligram oxycodone pill went for $15 and in the upper left hand corner you can enter what you paid for a street drug so I have a lot of questions here the first question I have is who the heck is paying for this I mean putting this site up costs money and somebody somewhere is paying for it and I just
[28:32] can't quite figure out the commercial interest behind it but the fact is that you have the power to prescribe and that the medications that you could prescribe have street value so there are lots of people trying to think of various ways to scam you out of a prescription all right the lost opiates I know this is all something that we're very familiar with right now the opioid epidemic and even though everything is becoming digital it doesn't always mean that you are protected and I want to share a personal story of when I entered the dental world as a
[29:15] hygienist years ago I worked in a practice that did not have full-time hygiene for me so it was a rural area and so I would go to two different offices sometimes three on Fridays that were within 20 30 minutes of each other the interesting thing about this story is because I was filling in at different offices I we became familiar with this patient who would go to one office one week he's in pain swelling wouldn't get treatment for the abscess and then a several days later he'd go down the road 20 30 minutes down the road
[29:48] what happened is I started seeing his face and sometimes he'd have a different last name or a different first name his nickname was Jim or Bob and so we all talk about job hoppers well this patient was actually what we started referring to as a pill hopper and when we started figuring out I was like oh I just saw him a couple days ago down the road at the other practice so we were able to monitor that and even though we could do prescriptions for him and now it's digital that doesn't always mean that you are completely protected here's another
[30:21] scenario a patient can come in and you give do treatment you treat that root canal he's come in you gave given him pain pain medicine several times after he leaves and he's in pain he his car gets broken into the prescriptions lost or him and his wife get in a fight neighbors come over kids take the prescription out of their bathroom I had that excuse several times oh the neighbors kids came over and I had just filled my bike it in and they took the bottle and I don't know what happened to it so there's so many external things that can happen here
[30:57] what you really need to know is okay I filed the police report and then they tell you but I need the prescription replaced you know all of this chaos happened in my life I need you to help me out doctor we are in the helping business and we don't want to see people continually in pain so we definitely to know like is this a lost opioid situation or is this somebody who is making the rounds being a pill hopper the part of this too is that a police report looks official the police have no idea what was inside that car
[31:36] what is reported as lost in a police report is whatever the victim says is lost you know I remember when I was in the army at any time there was a vehicle accident what the guys in supply used to do was they would look at their inventory they would see whatever they were missing and they would say well that was in the truck that rolled over as a way of covering their inventory shortages in fact they did it once to the point where somebody actually sat and calculated the weight of stuff that would have been in that truck
[32:05] and they said well of course it rolled over you know it has a capacity of two and a half tons and you know according to your records there were eight tons of gear in it the fact that somebody hand you a police report that says their car was broken into and their their title all three prescriptions were stolen only means that somebody went to the police and gave that story it doesn't mean that it happened so we need to be careful when we get stories from people and want a prescription replaced for whatever reason this one happened to a client
[32:38] of mine and he got a call at home one night and the caller said I'm so-and-so I'm a dentist in Oregon which was about 3,000 miles away from where my client was and my wife is dying of cancer and she and I are taking one last trip in our motor home before she passes away and we have this problem that I hope you can help us with she's running a little bit low on a couple of her medications you know if I was in Oregon I would just renew them myself but I'm here in a different state and and this state won't won't honor my prescription
[33:21] so I'm just wondering if as a as a brother dentist you could help me out with this and my client was touched by this story I mean it all sounded very sad and of course he wanted to help but it goes back to what Amber said a few minutes ago about you know as a as a dentist or somebody who works in a practice inherently you're a healer so my client wanted to help out and and the the dentist from Oregon you know they had they had agreed on a on a place to meet and something in the back of my my client's mind just bothered him a little bit and what he did
[34:05] and and this is the advantage of being on the east coast and having a three hour time advantage over Oregon he formed the Oregon state dental board which was still open and you know how this is going to end he found out that there was no personal license in Oregon with that name so when when he went to the meeting place and the guy didn't show up in an RV and his wife really didn't look to be in the best of health but the police were there to grab but you can see how this story would work and it pulled at my client's heartstrings and
[34:41] you know he he felt the need to help another member of the fraternity and like I say he just had this little voice in the back of his head that thankfully he listened to
[34:54] so how do you protect yourself from that mother who wants Vicodin is screaming for Vicodin because her 12 year old child got his braces on today and he's in so much pain he needs some extra drugs right yeah I've heard that one too um number one it's pretty simple don't prescribe drugs for people that are not your patients now that's never happened to me I've never had like a dentist say hey can I give you some pain medication but Dave you've had that happen haven't you yeah I mean I you know my my own dentist once or twice you know offered I had a
[35:33] broken toe or something you know and I'm sitting in his chair and I'm obviously and not happy and and my own dentist said to me once uh you know can I fix you up with with some pain killers well that was awfully kind of him it was it was very kind of him and he was only trying to help and you know and we've known each other for 30 years um however there's a danger there isn't there yeah you know one thing that I do love about that story is it illustrates what we always say about people in dentistry um being healers right I mean they have such a precious heart
[36:10] and they're healers and they don't want anybody to be in pain for any reason and they just want to help you know kind of like amber was saying but I'm sorry I'm kind of off point um anyway so don't prescribe medication to someone a who's not your patient and b for any other reason other than dental um secondly all if you're gonna prescribe an narcotic always consult your state um your state maintaining or your state monitoring website um I know I I am a member of a lot of groups on facebook and it seems like there are several stories every single day where someone is explaining
[36:50] some scam that has been brought against them for medication and the monitoring website kind of saved them from getting involved in that and then patient ID for controlled substances we've talked you know in the past there are webinars about you know how many of you actually actually ask for a driver's license for your new patients that come in so that they can prove or that you can know and they prove who they are actually who they say they say they are I think I said that right anyway um so again if you're not asking for a valid identification for the
[37:31] patient or from the patient and you know of course again if it's a patient of record that you've been seeing for years and you know by face and by name that's not really what we're talking about we're really talking about the new patients that come in or maybe somebody that's come in three or four times and you don't have a copy of the driver's license so you don't really know if they are who they say they are um I'll give a slight descending opinion here if it were me Wendy I would just check everybody and even if it's somebody I've known for 20 years I would say
[38:04] you know I know that you've been a patient here forever and of course I know you but just as a matter of policy we we always check ID when we prescribe controlled substances if you do it for everybody you don't have to think about it you don't have to make that decision about do I really know who this person is or not my sister-in-law is a family doctor and she almost got burned by this and what happened was that um there was uh somebody in her waiting room who who heard the receptionist called the name of another patient who was in the
[38:33] waiting room and the first person realized that the two of them looked fairly similar so and and this person was already on the prescription monitoring programs watch list so next time she came back to see my sister-in-law she booked in as the other patient and walked away with the prescription and eventually it got caught but I just wouldn't take anything for granted if I'm going to give narcotics I want to I just want to see your driver's license and if you do that for everybody you you can't go wrong um but Wendy's right too you
[39:07] know it's there's there's more of a purpose to be served by by doing that for some people than for others so everybody likes the concept of having nice teeth what not everybody thinks is that they should pay for it so sometimes people try to get free dentistry and I'll tell you the story that happened to one of my clients um it starts with a patient who I'm going to call Mr. Smiles and Mr. Smiles had been a patient of this practice for a very long time and one day he brought his wife in who um had not been a patient of the practice and she needed a fair
[39:47] amount of work so the practice started doing it um it all got built to her husband's insurance and the insurance didn't pay and the practice followed up with the insurance company and eventually it it went to somebody at the insurance company and what they said basically was uh we can't tell you how we know this but the person who was treated in your practice was not Mrs. Smiles so audience members what do you think's going on here make your hypothesis and and and think about it well um oh one more thing I should tell you
[40:34] um after they got this answer from the insurance company the practice called Mr. Smiles Mr. Smiles was back into practice within an hour with cash to pay the bill so now what do you think's happened well the answer is Mr. Smiles had both a wife and a girlfriend and as it turned out his wife wasn't using his dental plan she was dental phobic and Mr. Smiles thought to himself well if my wife isn't using it you know really my girlfriend could
[41:14] so it was his girlfriend showing up pretending to be his wife and I'm guessing that the insurance company called Mrs. Smiles to do some kind of verification and the real Mrs. Smiles said um now I haven't been to the dentist in nine years and that's why they didn't pay the claim um so what do we do about this Amber well Dave when you tell that story it makes me think of what we're all familiar with now
[41:44] like match.com or Tinder where you swipe left or swipe right you know what you see isn't what you get I have no experience with this but okay yeah I mean you don't want to go on a blind date with a patient after you meet them I mean that's what that brings to my mind like basically they went on a blind date and said oh looks good right so I always tell offices you know verify what you see we always say trust but verify we're not on the blind dating site you know so we got to overlook that so you want visual images to identify
[42:21] your patient and responsible parties like you're saying Mr. Smiles we need to make sure that Mr. Smiles is who he says he is as well um majority of software nowadays will support support image capturing for this uh in addition to a driver's license I always recommend an insurance card as well if you have a patient that has insurance if your software does not support taken a photo of that um scan you can usually scan it into that or there's third party companies now that offer that so that's the first thing I want to visually see that what I see
[42:57] when you hand it to me and what I have in your file is what I'm getting right uh because we're going on that first blind date with our patient then the next thing that I've seen happen even in pharmacies medical practices all sorts of things is excuse me Mr. Harris do you still live at 1901 Main Street Boulevard and of course what's your answer going to be well yes I do because that's what we're looking for so the key here is ask open-ended questions make the patient fill in the blanks so that as you are visually looking at who they said they were they're telling
[43:31] that to you uh you're making them fill in the blanks and properly give you the correct answer so that's a great screening process uh for all of your team members moving forward um so I definitely uh think that is really really important um here's another thing in dentistry we're all about giving and sharing but you've got to make sure what your patient is also seeing on the screen because you're looking at the patient in front of them they're driver's license that you just had pulled up you want to make sure that what you just had
[44:06] the next person doesn't see so make sure your monitors are secure uh so that you don't have any other people that say oh I saw so and so lives here and I heard what insurance he's got I can I can definitely tap into that um so make sure that's not visible and here's a key thing for me like I said earlier so patients can't also access their records when you walk away from a system make sure it automatically logs off so similar to your smartphone we all have pass codes face codes thumb prints majority of smartphones now are going to have an automatic log off so that
[44:42] someone can't walk by pick up your phone and get into your information no different in your dental practice make sure that it's going to time out so that it is more protected and the people who are supposed to access it and supposed to verify and help minimize these external threats can do so accordingly let me show you guys something um whoops find the right level um that's called an every key they cost about 40 dollars and it it hooks by bluetooth to my computer when I get more than eight feet away from my computer
[45:21] as long as the every keys in my pocket so when I walk eight feet away my computer logs when I come back within the eight feet my computer unlocks and it's so simple because I don't even have to think about so there are increasingly there are technological solutions to this problem as well you know the danger is when you count on somebody to have to remember to log out of their computer when they walk away from it I mean that's it's easy to forget and I think in a lot of practices without pointing fingers
[45:53] the worst offenders probably have the title doctor in front of their name and they're sitting there at their workstation and then they get called in to do a hygiene check and they don't want to keep the hygienist waiting because Amber we all know what cranky pants they can be so they they end up not taking the the 10 seconds to log out so maybe technology can help you um just go back to the open-ended questions thing for a minute where I live the hospitals are terrible at this you know if you're going to the emergency room here and you say your name
[46:25] is David Harris the next question they will ask you is you know is is your date of birth and then they'll give it to you and is your address and they'll give it to you and as Amber says if you're an identity theft you do all you have to do is just keep saying yes as opposed to the hospital saying Mr. Harris what's your date of birth and making sure that it lines up with with what's in their computer and asking what's your address and if I give something that's different than what's on file they say oh it looks like we may have a former address
[46:53] where did you live before your current address you know they they just play right into it and as Amber says in your dental practice you need to when it when somebody comes in who's who's a patient and you're updating their address information just ask them the question what's your address and compare it with what's on the screen I know we want to do the closed-ended thing because it's quicker but it's also a bit dangerous so we have all this information in our computer system what could someone do with someone's full
[47:27] name their social security number their address their birthday and also their insurance information well number one the street value of a credit card number is five dollars but check this out the street value of insurance information is fifty dollars you know a lot of people think you know that it's crazy that somebody would want to steal someone else's insurance information but I actually have a good friend who is an orthodontist in California and she was working on a patient that was going to have to have orthomathic surgery
[48:06] well you know in ortho you go through several months of orthodontic treatment you position the teeth and then you get ready to have the surgery when the patient went to have the surgery the surgery she went to the hospital but the surgery was declined and then the patient just disappeared and my friend found out that her patient her orthodont her legitimate orthodontic patient had used someone else's insurance identification and someone else's insurance policy to have orthodontic surgery done I mean so we think we're immune to that I mean you think
[48:45] well who in orthodontics would want to steal somebody's insurance information and why that doesn't make any sense but it really does if you consider the financial value of it let's talk about bulk information theft and I see um uh oh where did it go Gary Gary um where are you at yeah Gary Solomon's on with us tonight so yeah I like I feel inferior even talking about this right now because this is gonna be I mean he's gonna blow us away with his information next month on this but
[49:24] when we talk about bulk information theft we're talking about stuff that ends up on the dark web and all that we don't want to go there but here's here's some information that is important for you to know number one if there is a HIPAA violation or a HIPAA breach of your software there are very heavy fines the fines are broken down into tears which I won't bore you to tears
[49:58] that was like an amber corny joke what are you proud of me amber I like it okay anyway yeah no seriously it is it's broken down into four tears and it's based on how deliberate or unintentional um the breach was but needless to say there are some hefty fines that go along with it as well depending on the number of patients which the breach occurs I mean good how many of you have at least 500 patients in your database right I would venture to say every single one of you every single practice has at least you go through the entire span your your active patients
[50:40] your inactive patients you've got more than 500 patients well if you have um a HIPAA breach of your data and more than 500 patient accounts are affected not only do you have to notify those patients um by either us mail or email you also have to know you also have to notify the media can you imagine what that would do to the reputation of your practice um for patients afford to be on the news that you had a data breach or be in print your local newspaper that you had a data breach um those patients if there is a data breach they also have to be notified
[51:19] within 60 days or you could incur more penalties um and also most of most of data breaches um come from malicious outsiders through email through spam right so I'm so excited Gary is with us tonight Gary I'm sorry I can't put you on screen and you can address you could address this more thoroughly than I can but we're counting on you to do it next month Dave or Wendy one thing that this that made me think of is we all live on the internet now so think about that if the media gets a hold of that story in your name and your practice
[51:55] is the front line of that story think about your five star reviews after that day I mean that's really going to hurt you yeah it absolutely is I mean patients want to know that their information will be safer um this is one thing that I saw with with one of our clients and um the office manager got a call from somebody who said they were with Delta Dental and he had a fairly convincing story he said a bunch of claims got miscoded so claims that were submitted from this office got got coded to another office
[52:33] and they're going to fix it but it'll take a couple of weeks because basically they have to manually go through a whole bunch of clients and until that is done we have to put both the offices on payment so no more money coming from Delta and the next thing that Mark Stevens said is um you can help us here if you can read if you can give us all the claim forms that were submitted to us from one date to another then we can correct this much faster than if we have to go in and hunt all these errant claims out manually so at this point the poor office
[53:10] manager I mean the last thing she wants to do is go to her doctor and say you know at Delta Dental screwed up and you know they're our biggest insurer and they're not going to pay us any money for goodness knows how long I mean that was something she really didn't want to share with the doctor but then Mark Stevens said something that kind of got her a little concern when he said we'll send a courier to your office at 2 p.m. to pick this stuff up and that was the point when she got a little bit spooked and she called me
[53:38] and I said no way there's there's no way that this happened and you know we we phoned Delta and you know it it hadn't happened and they said and if it did this is not how it would be corrected so you know if if this office manager had gone along with what this guy named Mark Stevens or or identifying himself as Mark Stevens was if if she'd gone along with it I mean they would Mark Stevens would have gotten you know probably 300 insurance claims all of which have all those things that Wendy talked about you know the the the name of the the claimant what
[54:19] treatment they had what their policy number was all those things would be on those clients and at street value of $50 each that's a lot of money
[54:32] so we're talking we've talked about these external threats and how to think about all this and it does it seems like a lot coming at you in many different ways as you've heard me say in previous webinars dentistry is a lot of moving parts our practices are busy we have patients coming in with all different types of needs smile makeovers we're trying to make patients happy and comfortable want to come back and see us this one down the halls in pain the next one maybe has high anxiety so we have to really adjust and and be ready for different situations
[55:05] and this is what makes dentistry a very attractive target because they know we're fast paced and we are a service based trying to help people business so that's one of the main things we have to to remember but our focus on helping people can make you feel vulnerable one of the main things we want to do is help you be more safeguarded so that you know when you go on that blind date with the patient it's an end result you're not dealing with like a messy divorce or a messy separation at the end of it right so that's why we want to share that
[55:38] information with you so definitely knowing the details having a little bit of slow breathing meditation writing down all the things you need to do in your practice for all of these external threats as well as the internal threats is definitely key we have a customized package for you that I'm very passionate about our whole team at prosperity we very we pride ourselves in trying to safeguard our clients so our office protection system would be definitely something for you to look into because we look at all these 25 hot spots internally and externally
[56:10] in your office awesome well it's that time when we turn it over to the audience and allow them to ask some questions just if you have a question type it into the question box in zoom wendy and amber are going to start feeding them to me in a minute and just while you're doing that we'll mention a couple of things first of all we love to hear from you and there's how to reach us if you have concerns about embezzlement in your practice or as amber says you want to protect yourself against internal and external threats and we're going to make this
[56:47] really attractive because from now until July 31st we're giving anybody who who calls us from this webinar a $500 credit on essentially any prosperity product so if you are thinking about doing something in your practice now's your time and as mentioned early on we have two webinars left before we wrap this up so august 19th and we've we've said his name a few times gary selman is going to be with us and if you haven't heard gary speak he's awesome I mean he can scare the pants off you but he's very knowledgeable and his company's called black talent security and they're
[57:29] in a way they're like what we are I mean they're their niche is very narrow and they deal with IT security they're not like your IT person who you know fixes your system when you can't get email their whole focus is security and gary's a great presenter you will learn a lot from him and then our final final final session will be on September 23rd and that one's going to be a little bit free-wheeling and I think Wendy and amour and I are going to talk about some of the experiences that that we've had so we'll see you then as I say if you have questions we'll we'll take
[58:08] about 15 minutes worth of them and thank you all for being part of our audience. Oops well let me let me just say real quick I've noticed Stephen Lang and John H have had their hands raised their zig hands raised for a while Stephen and John if you have a question if you would either put it in the chat or send it through the Q&A box we'll be able to answer those questions for you I'm not sure if that was a mistake or if but their hands have been up on this whole time so maybe they have to go to the bathroom Wendy interested
[58:46] maybe they have to go to the bathroom and actually if I can just modify something Wendy said please put your questions in the Q&A box we have somebody monitoring chat but they're not really in a position to answer questions and and I see a few questions coming through in the in the chat we we can't tackle them there so if you have done that please just copy it and paste it to the Q&A and and and we'll take it there and if you have to go to the bathroom please do it it's it's it's really hard to sit here and concentrate when your wisdom teeth are flowing
[59:20] okay I I um I have a question or someone has a question what is the current level of enforcement for hippo violations I just saw that graph today draconian is the word the the folks who do this have no sense of humor I was looking the other day at some of the fines applied so far in 2021 the biggest fine so far this year is like 5.2 million dollars so that's a that's a single company that got fined um no there's no there's no leniency there's no clemency whatsoever if you breach hippo I mean as Wendy said they will look at what your intent was and you know and and
[1:00:07] a deliberate breach obviously is more serious than than one that's inadvertent but they will find you no matter what and you know if if you commit a hippo breach and then you don't follow the proper corrective action um that's that's when you can expect to get hit pretty hard because now it's moved from something that's accidental to something that's willful um so we don't want to be there um okay and then someone wants to know the name of the lock key to the computer I guess the one you hello oh it's called an every key e v e r y k e y
[1:00:48] there may be other ones as well that's that's the one I use and um it's great it works with all my devices so my laptop and my desktop and so on and it's just this this little gizmo that fits on my key ring and um you know you plug it in about once a week to charge it and and it just connects via bluetooth to to your computer so if you're using a desktop computer most desktops don't have a built-in bluetooth chip so you need a you need a chip as well but um I priced these the other day and they were 44 dollars with free delivery so it's uh you know it's a great little gizmo and it
[1:01:25] just stays with me on my keychain okay and then Valerie wants you to elaborate on the office protection system um amber do you want to tackle that one or do you want me to uh you go ahead okay um ops is uh is a product that we have where we take a look at your control systems and I'm using this in the broadest sense so everything from looking at how you background check people before you hire them to the security settings in your practice management software to what the doctors review processes at the end of the day so we crawl over a lot of areas and the idea is
[1:02:09] to find the weaknesses and a lot of them of course are oriented towards embezzlement but we also deal with issues like appropriate computer usage and um security and the security of of information and things like that so the idea is to help you find areas where you're vulnerable and then correct them and um amber does a fair amount of work in that department as does uh one of our other team members debbie long and um you know it's a it's a great way to fix some things that are broken in your practice and the corrections I think I'd say amber are
[1:02:47] fairly gentle in other words it's not like you know it's not like this is going to turn your practice on its ear it's simply there to find the things that an embezzler and IT thief could could explain yes and the thing I love about what we offer with office protection system is we look at your practice as its own individual masterpiece and then we look at the areas that you're vulnerable and we customize okay here's how your practice is set up here's some weaknesses or vulnerability vulnerabilities that we see that could happen um and so we
[1:03:22] like to do that one on one interaction with you because a lot of you know people have oh this is the safest way but every practice is different every software is different um the services you provide may be different because you are a specialist um so we really customize it and really go in depth into the type of software you have the type of services you provide uh how you take payments how you hire all of those things yeah it's a it's a great product and you know we we'd love to chat with you if one on one if you have more questions okay um Valerie has
[1:03:58] another question and she said or she writes I was told that we could not keep copies of driver's license um there's nothing I'm aware of there certainly when you're hiring people and that's the situation where we also encourage you to check somebody's driver's license in that case the applicant needs to put their thumb or a post-it note or something over a few things like their date of birth because when you're hiring of course you can't discriminate by because of age so asking somebody's date of birth is is sort of in the no-fly zone
[1:04:35] there's no such restriction with patients there's there's nothing in there there may be a state law somewhere um certainly there's nothing federal and I can't I can't think of any state law in any state I'm familiar with uh that prevents you from keeping a driver's license or any other identification on file for a patient yeah someone else wrote um that they scan the IDs yeah that's scanning it into like a document document document work I mean some some practice management software has a specific place in the patient's master file where you can you can capture that um also the
[1:05:11] the other thing that a lot of practice management software will permit you to do is take a webcam picture of the patient so you actually have on their in their in their chart in their electronic chart you have their picture uh all good ideas I mean identity theft happens because somebody shows up as somebody else and if if you know who one of them is you can solve it um and just on that I saw a question about the Cure's database and whether that solves um prescription abuse kinds of issues uh it would if everybody would follow the rules um so no database on the planet
[1:05:50] is going to flag me if I show up at five different dental practices and I give a different name in each place and I get a narcotics prescription and I go to five different drug stores using those names and get them felt in other words if I kept using my own name and doing it yes that would get me caught um thieves even ones who are drug addicts are not stupid they they understand the system in which they function and they know they have to use different names um one one medical doctor here where I live got caught she was uh she was a user and
[1:06:28] she was phoning in prescriptions to a pharmacy uh for a specific patient and then she would go to the part the pharmacy and pick them up and she would say to the the pharmacist you know the patient's nimble that he can't get here so I'm on my way to see him now and I'm going to take the drugs to him and eventually she got caught because the prescription monitoring program realized that this one patient got 1200 opioid pills in a year which is a lot under pretty much any set of assumptions uh had the doctor been a little more artistic
[1:07:04] about this uh and maybe use different patients and different pharmacies and stuff she probably could have continued but you know databases have a basic limitation they assume that people are showing up under their own name and and the the addicts may not be quite that cooperative
[1:07:25] I have a question that's kind of interesting um why is an insurance card have more street value than a credit card what are your opinions on that yeah um that's a great question and um a couple of things there first of all the anti-fraud um safeguards built into credit cards are pretty good in other words for example your credit card company knows approximately how much gas your car takes and you know if you if if you drive a hybrid and it's normally 30 to fill it and suddenly you're spending $200 at the gas pump two or three times your credit card company
[1:08:06] will will flag that and you know if they know that you live in Houston and um they suddenly see a whole bunch of purchases uh in Oklahoma City and at the same time they see a whole lot of gas and you're not somebody who typically travels or rents cars you know your your card will get blocked and I'll call you and and and just double check that you are in fact in Oklahoma City uh driving an earthrecker 9000 um the the sophistication of the insurance companies is much much much less uh some of this stuff and and Wendy and Amber have certainly seen it
[1:08:50] as have I some of the stuff that goes through insurance companies um we saw I saw somebody once who was um billing an insurance company for work that wasn't being done and and pocketing money and they build uh more than 12 root canals in a single month on a 14-year-old patient now you know everybody who's in the audience who has a connection to dentistry knows that there is no such thing as pediatric quadrant endodontics um you know that there's just not a 14-year-old on the planet who needs a dozen end-ups but the insurance company didn't catch that
[1:09:32] we did so they're a little bit unsophisticated and the other thing is people need fairly expensive treatment I mean if you need a kidney and you don't have insurance um you know that's $70,000 and if you had a working insurance a working set of insurance information and you can get that $70,000 kidney transplant covered under somebody else's insurance um that has a lot of value I mean nobody can squeeze that kind of money on a credit card so yeah working working credit cards have value but it's it's limited working insurance is worth a lot more so great question
[1:10:16] okay Patrick wants to know if we're going to be at the ADA meeting in Houston next good question uh a little off our planning horizon but uh yeah we we likely will have somebody there um and and if we're not at that we'll we'll probably be in Houston for some other reason in the next year Patrick and uh if you're around yeah uh love to love to chat you can always see our upcoming speaking schedule on our website so if you go to prosperity.com and then follow the menus through to speaking um you can find out where we are because all of our all of our
[1:10:53] speaking goes into the calendar and I can I do a shameless plug who's gonna say no to you Wendy who's gonna say no but I hate shameless plugs but anyway um this this this made me think of it uh because I've I've been troubled well let me do my shameless plug first um I think it's very generous of you um to offer a $500 credit to $500 credit toward um prosperity and services because I know we normally we normally don't do that I mean we normally don't do any kind of discounting whatsoever
[1:11:35] but um I just what what made me think of that and I'm actually kind of grateful that that you're doing that I'm coming with from a grateful heart is I had to um deliver some bad news to one of my clients today who when we had when we had the initial examiners initial uh interview he was 100 percent sure let me take that back he was 99 percent sure that nothing was happening in his practice um and I you know I just kept telling him well as a certified broad examiner I go into the examination and I'm neutral I I don't have any opinion if it's happening or not I look at
[1:12:14] transactions and the results of those transactions are either the money goes into your bank account or the money does not and that's what I look at um so anyway um I had that difficult conversation with him this morning and we're up to about $80,000 so far and you know it's it's so it's so typical of what we usually say there are three methodologies that she's using and it's up to 80 and we're not even through with the 12 month 12 month investigation time period yet so what's our average around 100 110 it'll be past that
[1:12:54] by the time we get up there anyway but my whole thing was to say thank you David I know we don't normally do that uh we don't normally discount so that's kind of you to offer our live web we appreciate our audience it's been such a privilege to be able to share time with you guys over the the past uh the past 15 months and uh it's it's a chance for us to give back so we want to thank all of you tonight and and every night for hanging out with us and uh we'll see you back on august 19th um wendy emmer thank you very much uh you guys always make
[1:13:30] this fun and um you know it just wouldn't be the same without without without a wendy emotional explosion at some point in the session and um just love those thank you all very much um I'll also thank uh our our colleague she level driscoll who's uh who's who's the uh silent one on chat with us and um we'll see you guys all in uh a little under a month thanks good night everybody and uh hi let me guys hi thanks for attending
[1:14:04] thanks for listening to the dental practice owners podcast brought to you by prosperitant you can contact prosperitant through its website www.prosperitant.com or by calling 888-398-2327 if you have questions about this podcast if you would like to discuss your practice or there is a topic you would like to see in a future podcast we would love to hear from you amber wendy and david we'll be back soon with another episode