Fairness opinions in health care transactions--cause and effect: the emergence of private equity funds as a driving force in big and small transactions and the resulting increased use of fairness opinions.

The use of fairness opinions has become increasingly common with respect to the sale or merger of any company or division in a private equity funded or sponsored deal. The fairness opinion is often used to demonstrate that the value at which the transaction took place was a fair value to the selling company and thus did not improperly or unfairly leave the common holders with little consideration. This article covers rules and guidelines that should be adhered to in the issuance and review of fairness opinions.

Betrayal of trust: reflections on questionable dental practices.

Dentistry is built on relationships of trust between individual practitioners and their patients and their colleagues. Increasing commercialism may be eroding some of that trust. An inventory of questionable practices is presented along with examples. These include inappropriate care that is unreasonable, aggressive, or intrusive; inappropriate billings, and misrepresentone's identity or qualifications. Although dentistry is predominantly provided by individual practitioners, it is not practiced in a vacuum.

What's a business for?

In the wake of the recent corporate scandals, it's time to reconsider the assumptions underlying American-style stock-market capitalism. That heady doctrine--in which the market is king, success is measured in terms of shareholder value, and profits are an end in themselves--enraptured America for a generation, spread to Britain during the 1980s, and recently began to gain acceptance in Continental Europe. But now, many wonder if the American model is corrupt. The American scandals are not just a matter of dubious personal ethics or of rogue companies fudging the odd billion. And the cure for the problems will not come solely from tougher regulations. We must also ask more fundamental questions: Whom and what is a business for? And are traditional ownership and governance structures suited to the knowledge economy? According to corporate law, a company's financiers are its owners, and employees are treated as property and recorded as costs. But while that may have been true in the early days of industry, it does not reflect today's reality. Now a company's assets are increasingly found in the employees who contribute their time and talents rather than in the stockholders who temporarily contribute their money. The language and measures of business must be reversed. In a knowledge economy, a good business is a community with a purpose, not a piece of property. If, like many European companies, a business considers itself a wealth-creating community consisting of members who have certain rights, those members will be more likely to treat one another as valued partners and take responsibility for telling the truth. Such a community can also help repair the image of business by insisting that its purpose is not just to make a profit but to make a profit in order to do something better.

[The ethics of dental records]. / Die etiek van tandheelkundige rekords.

This article highlights five aspects of necessary record-keeping in practices: ethicolegal requirements, confidentiality and disclosure, risk management and consent, accounts and practice management, and forensic functions. Patient records therefore have ethical, moral, legal and management implications. Unfortunately, they are often underestimated or ignored by practitioners. In the light of increasing litigation and disciplinary hearings, it is necessary to remind practitioners that every clinical action also contains an administrative component which has to fulfill many requirements.