With an increasing demand for dental assistants throughout California, CDA is encouraging member dentists to consider transferable skills while recruiting and hiring. Smile Crew CA aims to create a pool of qualified candidates by targeting job seekers who have been displaced from service roles with adaptable skills that would make them a viable dental assistant.  

Practice owners can rely on a remote workforce to minimize the number of people in the practice and help curb the spread of the coronavirus. The following tips can help practice owners and team members develop a successful work-from-home strategy. 

Individuals and small-business owners should watch for suspicious or unexpected emails that appear to be from the Small Business Administration or that direct the recipient to the SBA’s website for COVID-19 relief. 

The Drug Enforcement Administration in a July 29 press release warns registered practitioners that scammers are posing as DEA employees in telephone calls in an attempt to defraud and extort victims. According to the DEA, the scammers are calling from spoofed DEA phone numbers.

The Americans with Disabilities Act and state disability rights laws require dental practices, as places of public accommodations, to make their services and facilities accessible to disabled individuals. This includes making a dental practice website accessible to those who are visually impaired. 

HIPAA fee limits do not apply to a patient’s request to transmit records to a third party or to a third-party’s request, with patient authorization, to receive patient health information, according to a notice released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

A current email scam is using the name of CDA President Del Brunner, DDS, in an attempt to trick the recipient into purchasing a high-value gift card from a multinational retailer. As of this writing, CDA has not received any reports from members who have received the imposter email but has confirmed that the emails are circulating to individuals in the California dental field.

Several dentists have notified CDA Practice Support or their local dental societies of two scams targeting their dental practices. Dentists in the San Francisco Bay Area, South Lake Tahoe and Central Valley report receiving calls from individuals who claim to be DEA agents, provide badge numbers and proceed to make demands. The callers tell the dentists they could be arrested if the demands are not met.

Dentists who are purchasing or starting a practice or making a change to their business structure should be aware of a new IRS requirement. As of May 13, 2019, only individuals with a tax identification number — either a Social Security number or an individual taxpayer identification number — may request an employer identification number.