A pandemic in dentistry has broken out here in the US. Now reported in Indiana, it has also broken out in several other states including Oklahoma and Texas. By no means is this pandemic an accident; personnel in some dental offices are having weekend hoedown type events designed specifically to maximize its effectiveness. Who are the victims? You and I! Is there a test for it, you bet! Is there a cure? That is yet to be seen.
What is MDDR
You have probably never heard of MDDR. Not wanting to wait for some official someone or media personality to give it a catchy name and acronym, I did it myself. Today I proclaim MDDR is Mass Destruction of Dental Records. (I don’t think I have to have some type of official ceremony so I’ll check on that later.)
Officials in states, such as Texas, who are searching for evidence of this pandemic might want read this story out of Indianapolis concerning a breakout of MDDR.
Posted: Mar 18, 2013 7:06 PM CDT Updated: Mar 20, 2013 10:09 AM CDT
By Bob Segall - bio
INDIANAPOLIS, IN - Thousands of patient records found by our 13 Investigates team are now in the hands of state investigators.
Late Tuesday afternoon, special agents with the attorney general's office picked up boxes loaded with thousands of sensitive, personal documents. We found the sensitive information dumped at an Indianapolis church parking lot.
Recycling is a great idea, except when it's private patient information being recycled in a public recycling bin. 13 Investigates got a call to a recycling dumpster in the parking lot of a south side church after the church secretary noticed something strange inside.
What we discovered inside the dumpsters were thousands of patient files all containing names, addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, Social Security numbers, X-rays, medical histories, dental information, credit card numbers and more.
13 Investigates loaded up the files - nearly 7,000 of them - and brought them back to our studio to figure out where they came from. It turns out all of the records are from two dental clinics - Comfort Dental offices in Kokomo and Marion.
The Comfort Dental offices in Marion and in Kokomo are now closed. The dentist who ran these offices lost his dental license because of fraudulent billing. Now, a year and half later, more bad news for his patients.
Janet Christie is shocked to learn her family's dental records and private information were just dumped instead of being destroyed.
"That's us. Wow," she said, shaking her head in disbelief. "I'm disappointed. I'm angry. This is just very upsetting. I can't believe it. I wouldn't think it would ever happen to me."
Ben Moses feels the same way after we found all of his family's dental records inside the dumpster.
"This was a shock to say the least," he said. "It seems like anybody could have walked by, seen what was in there and walked off with my personal information. I would expect information like this to be shredded, to be disposed of properly," said Moses.
