iWatch reporter shares tips on tracking private health, dentistry data

David Heath of the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News and FRONTLINE producer Jill Rosenbaum dove into corporate dental chains and found many use selling tactics that often lead to unneeded and expensive treatments for patients: Dollars and Dentists: Investigating the problems with corporate dentistry.

David and Jill set out to do a story about dental chains using banks to offer no interest credit cards so people could get thousands of dollars of dental work. But the focus shifted to the chains’ business models.

Getting documentation was the biggest challenge. The Aspen Dental chain featured in one story didn’t accept Medicaid, which meant there weren’t any regulatory documents, David says.

David Heath moved to The Center for Public Integrity from The Seattle Times.

“We had to scrounge up internal documents showing the business model,” he says. Using LinkedIn, “we found a lot of former employees who were able to talk.”

Some information about the business practices was also available on the company’s website.

David’s story starts with Theresa Ferritto, an elderly woman who went to Aspen Dental to get two teeth pulled. She was charged $2,540 for two fillings and cleanings. David writes:

“Aspen Dental charged Ferritto $350 for an antibiotic put next to teeth the dentist was going to pull, a charge other dentists say makes no sense. There were four separate charges for an antibacterial rinse similar to Listerine for $129. There was even a $149 charge for an electric toothbrush that Ferritto didn’t even know she had, until she recently retrieved an Aspen Dental bag from her garage and found it inside.

Imagine how many groceries that would buy, she sighed.”

A separate story focused on another firm called Kool Smiles, which does accept Medicaid for its adolescent patients. But getting data from the 15 states where the company operates wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

To get started you have to understand each state’s disclosure laws and agency cultures, he says. Some states didn’t supply the information and one quoted a price of $600 just to run a query. He tried the CMS, which oversees Medicaid, but the information wasn’t accessible there either.

He was able to find lawsuits against the company alleging medically unnecessary treatments. He also found that the company “offers bonuses to dentists who bill beyond a certain amount and in some circumstances will fire dentists who fail to meet production standards, according to internal and court documents as well as former employees.”