May I have your attention?
Fingers poised on my keyboard, I’m
trying to formulate exactly what I am thinking at this moment. Let me take the emotion, frustration and
cursing out and see if it helps.
[deep
breath]
My home state of Texas passed a new bill (SB 519) that goes into effect September 1, 2015 that may affect consultants
in the dental industry. A big thanks to
my colleague Duane Tinker for the heads-up email blast! If you do business with Texas dentists, this could affect you. Keep reading.
Basically,
this is the bill. You must register as a
Dental Support Organization (DSO) if you provide two or more of the following services
to a dentist:
(A) office space,
furnishings, and equipment;
(B) staff employed by
the dental support organization;
(C) regulatory
compliance;
(D) inventory or
supplies, including dental equipment and supplies;
(E) information
systems;
(F) marketing and
advertising;
(G) financial services;
(H) accounting,
bookkeeping, or monitoring or payment of accounts receivable;
(I) payroll or benefits
administration;
(J) billing and
collection for services and products;
(K) reporting and
payment of federal or state taxes;
(L) administration of interest expense or
indebtedness incurred to finance the operation of a business; or
(M) insurance services.
Basically, the way the bill is
written, this pretty much includes all vendors, exhibitors, and speakers. But, wait, there are exceptions:
(1) an accountant
providing only accounting services;
(2) an attorney
providing only legal counsel;
(3) an insurance
company or insurance agent providing only insurance policies to a business; and
(4) entities providing
only investment and financial advisory services.
Wasn’t this half of the DSO
list? Why didn’t they just leave them
out of the bill in the first place?
When registering
with the state, the DSOs must provide the following information:
- the DSOs name and address
- the name and address of each Texas dentist the DSO has entered into a business agreement to provide two or more business support services
- the name of the dentist that owns 10% or more of the DSO
- the name of each person who is not a dentist and owns 10% or more of the DSO
- a list of all the business support services provided by each dental client.
It is an annual registration
that must be filed no later than January 31st and if you add or discharge
clients, you must file a corrected registration each quarter. Basically, it’s a VISA to provide services to
dentists in the state of Texas.
According to the Sponsor’s
Statement of Intent, the State Board of Dental Examiners was instructed to
survey the dentists and collect information about the DSOs. And, according to the SSI, the State Board of
Dental Examiners can request information of the DSOs.
What the heck? Some of the wording in the bill affirmed my
suspicion that this was an attempt to reign in Medicaid fraud. Yes, it’s a concern. I’m not sure why since the state of Texas is
one of the lowest ranked providers of Medicaid.
But it is certainly an official someone’s agenda.
If you are a provider of any of
the services that is listed in this bill, which pretty much includes all the
vendors, exhibitors, consultants that I know, this is what it means.
You have to register all your
Texas dental clients if you provide two or more services. So, limit your service offerings to only two
and you will be safe.
And, if you are a dentist,
better make sure that your DSO is registered with the state of Texas, or you
will be asked to provide that information by the Board.
Sarcasm aside, which has been
extremely difficult, I know their intent was not to limit small business
consulting firms in the state of Texas.
But it is how it is written.
Period.
And the monitoring of this
program is going to be a nightmare. What’s
the cost? Is it worth it?
They obviously didn’t talk to
any Dental Support Organizations prior to writing this bill about the economic
impact of not being able to do business in the State of Texas, unless that’s
what they want. Since this feels they
are going after a different fish than my species, why didn’t they write in some
parameters, like DSOs over $1,000,000.00 or DSOs providing support to Texas dentists
of over $500,000.
A typical DSO does not provide
services only for the state of Texas. I
live here but am national in scope, providing only roughly 10% of services
MAYBE in Texas. Most DSOs don’t “live”
here and a small part of their client base is here. But that is irrelevant. If you provide only ONE dentist two listed DSO
services, you must register, according to the bill.
By the way, the bill does not
state what they will do with the list of dentists that are having services
provided to them. There is a purpose to
gathering that information.
I’ve contacted two House
Members, who coincidentally, did not vote for the bill. I’ve contacted the Texas Dental
Association. I’ve contacted the
Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, since I perform dental embezzlement examinations in
the State of Texas. I’ve contacted an
attorney for an interpretation for the scope of my business that will be
affected.
Why?
It’s a $1000 per day fine if you
provide services to dentists under the structure of the bill and do not
register.
Sometimes it seems like they
have nothing else to do. I tried to
eliminate all the sarcasm, but sometimes I just can’t. Beware and check back - I'll keep you posted.
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