Dentalcompare
Clinical Director
Once again the national media is in a frenzy over the latest "practicing outside the standard of care" story of torture. Apparently this time, Dr. Michael Clair in Fall River, MA, used paperclips to do root canals. It seems like people love this kind of story, reminding them of those horror movies like “The Dentist” and “Marathon Man”. While I’m not sure how you would actually use paperclips for the root canal procedure itself, I would assume that he was using them as endodontic posts. The funny thing is that many dental schools advise use of paperclips as provisional posts, to help hold a temp crown in the event of a major gumline fracture. But possible misunderstanding aside, the story gets much worse.
Dr. Clair was giving prescriptions to his staff for narcotics, illegally billing Medicaid, had already lost his license in two states, and apparently called a patient a “crybaby”. If this guy doesn’t lose his license again, much less escape jail in some way, he definitely needs to hire a practice management consultant.
It’s hard to know where to start with this. I have to say that I would definitely place partial blame on the state who gave him a license in the first place…I mean third place. Did they not do a background check? The problem is that for those of us who practice day to day, the story is not that unfamiliar. We all have that one guy in our hometown where we wonder why the state board has allowed this person to continue practicing dentistry. Daily we battle that inward Cowardly Lion in patients, whose presence is only there as a result of a previous bad experience. In an age where, as dentists, we are constantly trying to get patients to believe in us and trust in us, it would be nice if someone had our backs a bit to protect the reputation of the profession.