Board adds hurdles to access discipline data

Oregon dentists earlier this year approached the state legislature about shrouding details of disciplinary actions against dentists in more secrecy, and the legislature declined. But at the June 27 meeting of the state Board of Dentistry, board members agreed to make it more difficult for the public to find out who was disciplined for what.

If an individual dentist is disciplined, the information will still be in the board’s searchable online database, but the public will need to have the dentist’s license number to look up the details. That information is available, but in a separate newsletter that the board mails to licensees plus 150 other people. The board’s minutes will contain the names of disciplined dentists but with few details about what led to the discipline.

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