Nevada dental board threatens to dismiss complaint after patient talks to media

Nevada Board of Dental Examiners executive director Debra Shaffer-Kugel, who was terminated from her position last month but inexplicably remains in the job, sent an email Friday evening to Reno resident Steven Garrity. The email said she is forwarding his failure to maintain confidentiality to the investigator of his complaint, the dentist who is the subject of the complaint and the board.

Dental board email by Las Vegas Review-Journal on Scribd

“Please be advised, pursuant to the Verification Form you executed on August 27, 2019 … you understand and agree to the confidentiality of the complaint,” she wrote Friday. “And that if you or your representative or agent should publicly disseminate or other failure to maintain the confidentiality of the complaint and/or any documents received concerning the complaint, the failure to maintain confidentiality will result in the dismissal of your complaint.”

Garrity talked to the Review-Journal last week about his frustration that the board has not acted on his complaint. The board is not meeting because it is awaiting the governor’s appointments to have a quorum.

Three board members resigned and three were not reappointed after an investigation in October that found the dental board’s lax oversight failed to protect patients from dentists who made repeated mistakes. The stories also found repeated ethics lapses at the board and failures to abide by state open meeting laws.

Garrity said the email shows the board’s priorities are out of whack.

“It’s not protecting the patient,” he said Monday after providing the email. “You’re protecting the dentist.”

In August, Garrity filed a complaint against Reno dentist Samuel Thomas, claiming a bridge Thomas installed caused repeated infections. In 2007 and 2012, Thomas was subject to corrective board actions involving mistakes on five other patients, board records show.

Board general counsel Melanie Bernstein Chapman, who also was terminated but remains on the job, sent an email Monday disputing that the board is protecting dentists.

“The confidentiality is not for the purpose of protecting the licensee,” she wrote. “Rather, the confidentiality guaranteed by statute and regulation, which the Board asks, and complainants agree in writing, to maintain, is to protect the integrity of the investigation and any action that may ultimately be taken as a result of that investigation.”

State board forms differ

The dental board’s complaint form includes a verification of complaint that must be notarized and has provisions that the complaint be kept confidential, and that the patient’s failure to maintain that confidentiality may result in the complaint’s dismissal.

In contrast, the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners complaint form contains no confidentiality requirements for the patients and no requirement to notarize the form. There is just a box requiring the patient to certify that the information provided is accurate.

Edward O. Cousineau, executive director of the medical board, said state law requires the board to keep complaints confidential, but the patients have a right to talk about their complaints. “We can’t control what the patient does,” he said.

Cousineau said he can’t speak for the dental board, but was appalled as an individual that an agency would try to limit a resident’s speech.

“That’s gross,” he said of Shaffer-Kugel’s email after the Review-Journal described its contents. “I can’t believe someone would represent that. That’s beyond stupid.”

Garrity said there is no reason for the medical board to have a different process than the dental board and that he believes the dental board’s intent favors dentists.

“She’s being vindictive,” Garrity said “She’s penalizing me. She’s threatening me to not proceed with the case but then you’re putting the public at risk.”

Garrity said the board’s lack of prompt action should be addressed with a deadline to investigate the complaint. The confidentiality form has discouraged attorneys from representing him in a malpractice action, he said.

Anonymous email distributed

Shaffer-Kugel’s email comes after she distributed an anonymous letter in November — a day before a state audit committee met to review the dental board audit — that accused Gov. Steve Sisolak and his staff of having a conflict of interest and close connections to board critics.

She asked if the Review-Journal would investigate the unfounded allegations in the letter, drawing the ire of the governor.

“A member of the dental board attempted to push salacious and false accusations to the media to undermine myself and my office before this meeting, going so far as to urge an investigation into those false allegations,” Sisolak said in November. “The timing of this concerted effort to attack my integrity and the integrity of my office does not appear coincidental.”

In November, a committee of the board terminated Shaffer-Kugel and Chapman’s employment effective Dec. 5, but no one will explain why they continue to collect a paycheck.

Garrity said Chapman told him the governor asked her and Shaffer to stay on until the new board was in place. But Chapman wrote she never told Garrity that the governor let her stay on and that the dental board controls employment of agency staff. But she did not address why she and Shaffer-Kugel remain in the jobs past the Dec. 5 deadline, citing attorney-client privilege.

Contact Arthur Kane at akane@reviewjournal.com. Follow @ArthurMKane on Twitter. Kane is a member of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing. Support our journalism.