Health officials in Oklahoma urge HIV, hepatitis testing for 7,000 patients of Tulsa dentist

Health officials in Oklahoma urge HIV, hepatitis testing for 7,000 patients of Tulsa dentist

www.washingtonpost.com

TULSA, Okla. — Health officials on Thursday urged thousands of patients of an Oklahoma oral surgeon to undergo hepatitis and HIV testing, saying unsanitary conditions behind his office’s spiffy facade posed a threat to his clients and made him a “menace to the public health.”

State and county health inspectors went to Dr. W. Scott Harrington’s practice after a patient with no known risk factors tested positive for both hepatitis C and the virus that causes AIDS. They found employees using dirty equipment, reusing drug vials and administering drugs without a license.

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This is bad, very bad. I would hope those 7,000 victims are okay and do not have any of the listed illnesses. Given then number though, it looks grim at best.

These are contagion type illnesses. They could have infected their partners or they could have been infecting strangers. This is pretty nasty stuff....

I hope that everyone is okay, but those that are not should sue the hell out of that doctor.

“It’s uncertain how long those practices have been in place,” Snider said. “He’s been practicing for 36 years.”

With the above snippet leads me to believe there could be more then just the 7,000...

-SAP-

www.washingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Gross. Hang this man.

I hope all his patients are okay. They do not deserve this.

reply to post by TFCJay


I have a slight feeling he won't be practicing anymore...

-SAP-

reply to post by SloAnPainful


Holy jesus...imagine taking your son or daughter to this place....what a disgrace...wondering if they have the death sentence in Oklahoma? Wait I think Mr. McVeigh said "YES"...what a tragedy....

reply to post by chrismarco


If they take their kids there chances are they go there too. Infecting a whole family with such a horrible illness...Beyond horrible...

-SAP-

reply to post by SloAnPainful


That is terrible. Hopefully, no other patients show signs of infection. Sounds like a sketchy practice that ran more on looks than actual appropriate medical care. Unclean equipment, out of date drugs..Wash Post article said that a test was supposed to be run on equipment once a month but one hadn't been run in 6 years. It makes me wonder who the heck was in charge of the results of those tests and was it a state agency? What about inspections as well? Scary stuff.

Wow, not only do you get to go to the dentist and get ripped off, now you get to contract hepatitis and HIV as well. Such vast irresponsibility is just sickening and this man should be punished to the highest degree of the law. Now he has given many people the eventual sentencing of AIDS and damaged the livers of thousands with his hepatitis breeding rampantly. He will definitely be stripped of his license, but my mind can only wonder just how many lawsuits will be pressed against him. I hope they suck him dry and take everything he has because he sure as hell took everything they had.

So sad. This didn't have to be.

I use to inspect physician offices for insurance companies but never a dentist office. Now i wonder why since insurance companies often cover dentists.

We would inspect offices and charting for compliance with rules set by the state, CDC, EPA, etc. Failures were given notice and a few months to make the recommended changes. We also looked at best practices which if followed insured better outcomes for the patient and insurance company.

When I saw this article of failures I recalled a physicians' office I once visited in Dallas, an older urological surgeon. He failed for many of the same standards mentioned in the article. Don't know who did the follow up or what happens to them when they fail a second time.

I know people don't like insurance companies because they are 'all about the money' but the fact is they want to keep the money and they don't want to pay for the infections people get from the likes of poor practices like this. Then again, if it wasn't required, would they have ever done it?

I think I'd deal with dentures someday over risking HIV. What a bunch of the worst society has to offer. Everyone who knew about the infectious practices is about equally guilty as far as I'd consider it if I were among those to test positive. Now there are serious criminal charges for knowingly giving someone AIDS as I understand things. There ought to be the same for gross indifference and willful negligence. The qualifiers to those are important, but this example would fit it all, I'd say.

reply to post by SloAnPainful
Man, how lazy did these people have to be? It doesn't take much energy to put on fresh latex gloves, throw the tools into the autoclave and spray down surfaces with some Lysol. Because of the laziness of the dentist and his staff now people's lives are at risk. That is sick and just so wrong! I hope that everybody who worked at this office has the book thrown at them!

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Lazyness, stupidity, and possibly greed caused this. That dentist should have to pay, shutdown his practice, and be charged.

-SAP-

I honestly haven't been to the dentist in almost seven years because I stopped trusting that they knew what was completely right for my teeth. That and, me being in a small area it's easier for things like this to happen. My family also has no dental insurance so our policy is don't go unless something hurts.

On another note, we could have gotten a big settlement of malpractice because a few years ago at a doctor's office, my father got a prostate biopsy done (weird findings on blood test) , and then about the next week on the front page of the newspaper, it said how that clinic had been re-using needles. Not only did he have to go be degraded, but he also came to find that the needle they so eloquently shoved up his bum could've been used once or multiple times before.

Like the dentist wasn't already scary enough. How did he get away with his operation for that many years?

And, you'd have to wonder about the quality of the work you are getting from some people that are too lazy to even clean up.

It's an Oklahoma thing I think, and this was the one that got caught. Medical and dental hygiene is not the greatest, and because the population isn't bursting with comptetive healthcare aides, you get men and women who have never left the state to see competitive healthcare settings and don't know what the word scrupulous means. The state leads the nation in prescription drug abuse, so how else do they get those without a lot of oversight. I hate the low standard; the model of an okie being an ignorant inbred backwoods hick isn't there by accident.

The sickness is in the professional bias, that there were lower-quality tools used on infectious patients, separate from the on-record as healthy patients. They gave the hepatitis people the rusty needle; now the guy who had a liver problem now may have an HIV problem. That's Okie mentality to treat unhealthy people worse. Don't know where it comes from but I hate it.

Seven thousand people, many of them okies, running around potentially loaded with HIV and hepatitis. Beware the okies with deantal work. The ones with rotten teeth are fine.

As a citizen of Tulsa I am disgusted and at the same time horrified that this happened here. How many people do we have running around that have HIV or Hep C and don't know it!? My family has never been to this dentist so that's a good thing for us but I feel for the people who were patients of this sick individual. I think he should get the death penalty for just the one patient he infected. Sadly, I'm sure that isn't the only one that will turn up infected.

Sterilization anyone? This is absolutely ridiculous, and if I went to this dentist? I would be fit to be tied! That is putting it mildly. Although, I have heard of other incidents like this one when a dental professional has unknowingly passed off deadly infectious diseases onto patients. This is a matter that should be taken up with the state, local, and federal health departments as well as this dentist. They dropped the ball as well as this dentist. These medical practices are supposed to be inspected regulary, but apparently that was not the case? More taxpayer dollars going to nothing!

If there was regular inspections as there should be? Red flags could have been found, and corrective action could have been take to avoid incidents like this. Just make sure the inspections are by surprise. If there is a tip-off? It gives time to the scumbags to do their jobs correctly, and pass the inspection. Then afterwards, they go back to their improper ways. These poor people have been given the very possibility of death sentence if their tests come back positive. That goes for men, women, and children. This stinks to high heaven! Heads need to roll on this one!

reply to post by daryllyn


Before I get neck deep into this, let me tell you this is more wide spread than you think-

I lived in Tulsa in the late 80's and worked as a Dental Service Tech which entailed the installation, repair and servicing of just about everything you see, and don't, in a dental office.

All my work would be in the lab, equipment room or the operatories themselves.One of the main reasons for such unsanitary practices is just pure ignorance. You have got to realize that the cute doctor's asst. had probably put in an application at Appleby's the day they had gone to the Doctor's office looking for a job. The main reason why these instruments aren't sanitized is due to not doing the prep work (by rinsing the instruments off) and overloading the autoclave.
The autoclaves nowadays are all automatic, just hit the button and the machine preheats until it reaches the proper pressure, then the timer starts for a set limit for the sterilization process. Simple right?
Not really. It's like a bachelor doing his own laundry, if there's still room in the machine then that means you can still put more clothes in. They got washed but are they really clean?
Where is it that says how many pairs of jeans to how many shirts, socks and underware can go into the washer machine? You don't know unless somebody shows you and like in any other business there's going to be a turnover of employees and the art of 'autoclaving' is lost thru the shuffle. The only one left that knows is the Doctor himself.

That brings up the second point - Greed and ego.
The dental profession is one of the few medical professions that the doctor has to buy all of the equipment themselves. To give you an idea of the cost, back in the late 80's, it would cost around $20,000 per operatory for used equipment up to 60k for new. An operatory is pretty much the room with the chair in it with all the equipment to make it function. Quite a large out of pocket expense, especially if you have an office that may have seven operatories.
With that many rooms you'll have to have a high volume of patients and with a high volume of patients the doctor doesn't have time to put up with training the new person. Besides let one of the older employees do that and the seasoned employees are going to be the doctor's pets so to speak. They seen the procedure for injections, placing IVs and suturing(?) enough times that the doctor feels confident enough to let them do it because he has 6 other patients that he needs to check on.
And the money rolls in..
I remember this one oral surgeon that drove a Porche 911 targa to his office that had a carpeted garage attached for the Targa! I had answered a call from him at our office one morning about a problem with water coming out of his air lines. He wanted to know what the problem could be because we charged $55/hr, portal to portal, and he didn't want to pay that much. I tried to walk him through explaining with seven operatories it would be a long procedure of 'process of elimination' to find the issue. He gave in and said to send somebody. I personally had appts. out of town so one of the other techs got the call. The following morning the service dept felt a little tense when I got there and I heard one of the techs mention this certain Dr.'s name and I inquired how the service call went.
Note- The conclusion is not for the squimish especially if you have an imaginative mind-
Turns out that the Doctor had bought a new vacuum pump from us a week earlier and instead of us installing it he had his plumber do it. The problem was that the vacuum pump is basically a swimming pool pump that runs backwards with a water injection system to hold the vacuum seal. All of this waste goes down a floor drain into the sewer. The air compressor is in the same room and medical air compressors are glass lined plus they'll have an air intake snorkel on them so that it could be installed through a wall for fresh air.
The plumber went ahead and put the exhaust line from the vacuum pump down the drain and noticed that other line on the floor thinking that it was a condensation line from the compressor, so he put that one in the drain also.
It took three days for the compressor to fill completely before the Dr. finally called and it wasn't that he had water in his air line, he hadn't any air in his air lines, just water or correctly speaking, sewage!
Let's see, conservatively speaking, 7 operatories at 1 patient an hour, times 8 hours, times 3 days equals --? All shared each others ????

reply to post by lindsay1984


EXACTLY!
My little story was just one dentist there are other horrors out there. The key issue on this story is The Health Dept. said that none of this has been checked in 6 years. Okay, who's job is it to check this?

(sarcasm) It for sure couldn't be the Health Dept's job to keep up on these things because they're the one's that are pursuing this atrocity to find the blame so that it never happens again!

reply to post by SloAnPainful

This is bad, very bad. I would hope those 7,000 victims are okay

Me too. It's likely not as bad as it seems though...

"As a precaution, and in order to take appropriate steps to protect their health, it is important for these patients to get tested. It should be noted that transmission in this type of occupational setting is rare."

It sounds like they are going after him for allowing assistants to sedate and using bleach to sterilize equipment, which corrodes.