The war on fraud and its effect on dentistry.

The fraudulent actions of a disreputable few people in the health care industry have caused enormous losses to government and private health care payers. Fraud can take a number of forms, but usually is based on some form of deceit. In response, law enforcement efforts have been aided by a number of recent anti-fraud statutes and significant new resources. The challenge to dentistry is to ensure that legitimate efforts to fight fraud do not unduly burden practitioners, the vast majority of whom are honest.