Re: Dental Records
- From: "Bill" <dentaldoc@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 15 Mar 2006 11:33:22 -0800
Steve wrote:
Both technically and legally, you are paying for the diagnosis and___________________________________
clinical judgement. You are not paying for the physical records, and as
far as I can tell this has always been the case legally.
Yes, it always has been the case legally.
Some folks may be surprised to learn that within living memory, some
dentists didn't keep clinical records.
In the early part of the 20th Century it was common for some dentists
to see all patients on a walk-in basis. Treatment was rendered, paid
for, and that was that. Neither the dentist nor the patient had any
need to write anything down -- so no records were kept.
The whole transaction was akin to buying a loaf of bread at the
baker's. Who needed to keep records of that?
I can recall older dentists who told me years ago that this was true,
in a diminishing number of cases, up to the 1940's. By then, of course,
all the younger, "modern" dentists were keeping some sort of records on
all patients.
Some of those records were really nothing more than a small note of
what treatment was rendered, and the amount paid by the patient. Back
in the 1970's, I worked for a dentist who had been in practice since
1947. His "records" for each patient consisted of a single 3 x 5 card,
which listed the date and abbreviated type of treatment for each visit.
Some of his patients' total records had 20 years of visits on ONE
LITTLE CARD. A typical entry would be : "3-15-57 #3 ext. $15."
Imagine!
Obviously the dentist created the record to keep the accounts straight
in his memory. The dentist doesn't own the patient's checkbook register
when a patient writes in it, and the patient doesn't own the dentist's
record when he writes in it. That is the way it has always been.
- dentaldoc
.
- References:
- Dental Records
- From: lakota
- Re: Dental Records
- From: Alexander Vasserman DDS
- Re: Dental Records
- From: jkutti2000
- Re: Dental Records
- From: Clinton
- Re: Dental Records
- From: Steven Bornfeld
- Dental Records
- Prev by Date: Re: Dental Records
- Next by Date: Re: Dental Records
- Previous by thread: Re: Dental Records
- Next by thread: Re: Dental Records
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
