Fraud in the dental community is not a strange practice. It is not unusual among doctors either. Though it is not to say that all dentists are committed to a life of fraud, recently, many dentists have been found cheating the system.

Usually money, greed, is at the root of the problem and one of the main ways dentists are able to commit fraud do this is by performing treatments that are unnecessary. Treating a large number of cavities that are actually nonexistent is a common example. Because it is usually not possible to catch a dentist committing fraud since they are ruining any sort of evidence, they are oftentimes able to get away with it.

Other forms of fraud might include falsifying dates of treatment, concealing insurance coverage from patients, and failing to charge co-payments.

There are certainly ways to avoid dental fraud. Among these, being aware of this practice helps. Because it is one’s own responsibility to remain knowledgeable over what insurance companies will and will not cover, doing so will help prevent falling victim to this practice.

One of the more recent incidents regarding dental fraud occurred several weeks ago in Hawaii when a three year old little girl was subject to treatment by a dentist misusing his medical license.

The dentist had signed her up for four root canals and after heavily sedating her and leaving her alone on this sedative for about a half hour, the little girl was not breathing. She slipped into a coma and suffered a great deal of brain damage which reduced her to a vegetable- state, before passing away.

In this case, the dentist is accused of fraud for unnecessary treatment and negligence. Both of them together, especially, resulted in the death of a young girl that could have been avoided. Though usually part of the blame should lie, in the parent or guardians of the 3-year old little girl who were not aware of the excessive procedures taking place, they cannot be blamed for the dentist’s negligence.

In short, abuse of the system can lead to an event as serious as death and this can happen to any one of us. As children, we are usually unaware of how dentists treat our teeth and we leave it up to someone else, be it our parents, or the dentists themselves, to do with our health as they please. It is our responsibility to become aware of the things that might affect us.

“It ended up being a massive overdose,” said L. Richard Fried, the attorney representing the family in the case of the three-year-old’s death, commenting on the overdose of drugs given to the little girl.

This situation could have been avoided if the dentist had not been so prone to dental fraud and and if she had taken precautions against the occurrence. The procedure that killed her was not even necessary.