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Here are some of the places you can hear us speak soon:
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Savannah Dental Society, Savannah GA Sept 20, 2013
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| Western District Dental Society, Columbus GA Sept 26 2013 |
| The DBS Companies, Troy, MI Oct 11, 2013 |
Nassau County Dental Society, Long Island NY Oct 25, 2013
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| Metropolitan Atlanta Study Group Oct 8 2013 |
| American Association of Orthodontists Webinar Dec 4 and 10 2013 |
| Arizona Orthodontists' Study Club Jan 13, 2014 |
| Thomas P. Hinman Dental Meeting, Atlanta GA Mar 27, 2014 |
| Star Of The North Meeting, St. Paul MN Apr 2014 |
| TopsOrtho Software Topsfest, Tucson, AZ Mar 1 2014 |
Western Regional Dental Convention, Phoenix AZ Apr 3-5, 2014
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| Southern Association of Orthodontists, Nassau Bahamas Oct 2014 |
| Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists, Anaheim CA Oct 5, 2014 |
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Are you working harder but earning less? See this
See Dr. Mike DiTolla's interview with Prosperident CEO David Harris in Glidewell Labs' Chairside Magazine
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Ten things to do to embezzlement-proof your practice (a.k.a. "the myth of prevention")
There are many articles written with titles like that. Typically they suggest some mix of controls and auditing that are designed to block embezzlement pathways that others have used in the past.
This "static" approach to managing embezzlement suffers from several flaws:
- It ignores the active nature of embezzlement. Most embezzlers make a careful study of the systems in place and then design an embezzlement that skirts them.
- Embezzlers are adaptive. If their method of stealing is suddenly blocked, they move quickly to a different methodology.
- Virtually any procedure-based attack on embezzlement is doomed because embezzlers will selectively ignore policies that interfere with their stealing.
- Making theft more difficult works well against "crimes of opportunity" where a thief can choose their target. In embezzlement, there is only one potential target -- you.
- Embezzlers are responding to some pretty powerful pressures when they steal. You can't control these pressures, and more (or different) controls simply "channel" a thief into some other way to steal. And in a dental office, they have lots of possibilities.
So what works?
In a 2007 ADA survey of embezzlement victims, over two thirds of embezzlement was uncovered by behavioral (as opposed to financial) telltales. The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners reports that over 80% of embezzlers display one or more behavioral traits of embezzlers.
Our Embezzlement Risk Assessment Questionnaire is the best tool for identifying behavioral indicia of embezzlement. Dentists can obtain a free copy by emailing requests@dentalembezzlement.com
If you want to discuss your situation in confidence, we are happy to speak with you. You can call us at 888-398-2327 , or send email to our embezzlement hotline which is checked daily by our on-duty investigator at emergency@dentalembezzlement.com We will normally respond within 24 hours. |
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We crossed a bit of a milestone with this edition of our newsletter. This is our first newsletter that has broken the 8,000 subscriber threshold. When we started our newsletter just over a year ago, I had no idea that it would get so big so quickly. But something is changing in the world of dental embezzlement.
Five years ago, sometimes I felt like a lone voice in the wilderness when talking about dental office embezzlement. I did an interview (it seems like a long time ago, but it was actually in the Spring of 2011) for the online dental publication DrBicuspid.com. The interviewer captioned the article "Dentistry's Dirty Little Secret", a reference to the lack of discussion that this topic received in the dental media.
Wow, how things have changed. A couple of years later, online and print articles on dental embezzlement abound. I've spoken in lots of places, and we have many exciting speaking venues coming up. You may not know this, but many of our investigators are great speakers. These folks live and breathe embezzlement every day, and they can draw on this experience to deliver a presentation that is certain to hold the attention of an audience. For example, one of our busiest speakers is Dr. Pat Little. Pat is a former practicing dentist, when problems with his neck sent him towards a new career in accounting until consulting legend Linda Miles introduced him to us. In addition to his investigation work, Pat is doing four speaking engagements this month and next, and he's also got an article in this month's Dental Economics. Pat's a busy guy these days!
And it's also great to see that technology is now being applied against this problem. We were thrilled to see the recent launch of Practice Safe Guard (PSG). PSG is add-on software that works with one of the most popular practice management software types and operates in the background to identify suspicious transactions. We think that PSG holds tremendous promise and we will be following its growth with interest.
Embezzlement strikes three in five dentists at some point in their careers, and I'm glad to see it finally getting the attention that it deserves.
David Harris, CFE
Chief Executive Officer
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Prosperident -- The world's largest dental investigation embezzlement firm
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