Thousands of Oklahoma dental patients urged to get tested for HIV

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  March 28, 2013: This photo shows Dr. W. Scott Harrington’s dental practice, located Tulsa, Okla.Fox23.com

Thousands of patients of an Oklahoma dentist are being urged to get tested for HIV and hepatitis after public health officials found evidence of practices that could have exposed patients to the viruses. 

The Oklahoma and Tulsa health departments said Thursday approximately 7,000 people who were treated at clinics operated by Dr. W. Scott Harrington could have been exposed to Hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, calling the dentist "a menace to public health."

State and county health inspectors went to Harrington's practice after a patient with no known risk factors tested positive for both hepatitis C and the virus that causes AIDS. 

The agencies found "major violations" of the Oklahoma Dental Act and numerous violations of health and safety laws during an investigation into Harrington's practice. These included employees using dirty equipment, reusing needles and administering drugs without a license.

"This is an unprecedented event," Susan Rogers, executive director of the state Board of Dentistry, said in an interview. "To my knowledge, this has never happened before as far as a public notification of a (hepatitis C) case involving a dental office."

The Oklahoma Board of Dentistry said the inspectors discovered multiple sterilization issues at Harrington's offices, including the use of a separate, rusty, set of instruments for patients who were known to carry infectious diseases.

"The CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) has determined that rusted instruments are porous and cannot be properly sterilized," the board said in a 17-count complaint against the dentist.

Officials are sending letters to 7,000 people who are known to have been patients of Harrington, but they noted that they do not have information for patients before 2007. The letters urge the patients to be tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. -- viruses typically spread through intravenous drug use or unprotected sexual contact, not occupational settings.

"It's uncertain how long those practices have been in place," Snider said. "He's been practicing for 36 years."

Harrington could not be reached for comment Thursday. A message at his Tulsa office said it was closed and the doctor's answering service referred callers to the Tulsa Health Department. Phone numbers listed for Harrington were disconnected. A message left with Harrington's malpractice attorney in Tulsa, Jim Secrest II, was not immediately returned.

Harrington's practice in Tulsa is in a tony part of town, on a row of some of the city's most upscale medical practices. The white-and-green stucco, two-story dental clinic has the doctor's name in fancy letters on the facade.

Inside, the Dentistry Board said, Harrington ran a clinic that paid little attention to ensuring items were sterile. Dental assistants needing an extra dose of an anesthetic would re-insert used needles into drug vials, drug vials were used on multiple patients, the office had no written infection-protection procedure and Harrington told officials he left questions about sterilization and drug procedures to his employees.

"They take care of that, I don't," the board quoted him as saying.

The doctor is also accused of letting his assistants perform tasks only a licensed dentist should have done. Also, the complaint says that the doctor's staff could not produce permits for the assistants when asked for them.

Rogers said that as an oral surgeon, Harrington routinely does invasive procedures that involve "pulling teeth, open wounds, open blood vessels." The Dentistry Board complaint said Harrington and his staff told investigators that a "high population of known infectious disease carrier patients" received dental care from him.

According to the complaint, a device used to sterilize instruments wasn't working properly. A test is supposed to be performed monthly and sent to a lab to determine that the equipment is successfully sterilizing instruments, but "no such test had ever been performed in the 6 years one dental assistant had been working at the office," the complaint said.

The doctor also apparently used outdated drugs, as one vial found this year had an expiration date of 1993, and didn't properly keep track of drugs, the complaint said. It noted that a drug cabinet was unlocked and unattended during the day and that dental assistants administered IV sedation for procedures without the doctor being present.

It also said that although U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration records show Harrington had not received morphine from a distributor since 2009, the drug logs kept by his assistants said morphine had been used on patients intermittently throughout 2012.

Officials said patients will be offered free medical testing at the Tulsa Health Department's North Regional Health and Wellness Center.

Most people who become infected by hepatitis C get it by sharing needles or other equipment to inject drugs, according to the CDC's website. The infection can last a lifetime and lead to scarring of the liver or liver cancer.

Most people who get hepatitis B have it for a short time, though it can cause a long-term infection that can damage the liver. It can be transmitted through unprotected sex and sharing needles.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. 

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Who Made the Call to Release Thousands of Illegal Immigrants?

Thousands of illegal immigrants ticketed for deportation have been released from federal detention centers in recent weeks, according to a report that came out even as the White House and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano denied any involvement in the policy.

Plans to release illegal immigrants in anticipation of looming budget cuts were announced earlier this week, but the report by The Associated Press detailed the policy had already taken effect and on a much larger scale. Citing federal documents, the agency said more than 2,000 illegal immigrants facing deportation had been released from immigration jails and plans exist to release 3,000 more people by the end of the month.

The newly disclosed figures are significantly higher than what the Obama administration acknowledged this week as a "few hundred" who were released without the White House’s direct knowledge. And on Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, whose agency oversaw the move, said the decision to release illegal immigrants was made “in the field,” and without her knowledge.

Republicans in Congress, already critical of the plan to release illegal immigrants, demanded details, including the number of illegal immigrants released and the nature of any criminal charges they were facing as part of the deportation process.

"Simply blaming budget reductions as a means to turn a blind eye toward the national security of the American people is a dangerous plan, and one that calls into question the department's preparations for sequestration," wrote two Republican lawmakers, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The budget documents obtained by the AP show that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement released roughly 1,000 illegal immigrants from its jails around the U.S. each week since at least Feb. 15. The agency's field offices have reported more than 2,000 released before intense criticism this week led to a temporary shutdown of the plan.

Napolitano claimed Thursday that she had no part in her department’s decision to release low-risk detainees as a way to deal with the sequestration cuts that take effect today.

“Detainee populations and how that is managed back and forth is really handled by career officials in the field,” she told ABC News.

The states where immigrants were released include Arizona, California, Georgia and Texas.

The White House has said it was not consulted about the releases, and Napolitano has acknowledged they occurred in a manner she regrets.

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Wednesday said the government had released "a few hundred" of the roughly 30,000 illegal immigrants held in federal detention pending deportation proceedings. Carney said the immigrants released were "low-risk, noncriminal detainees," and the decision was made by career ICE officials.
  
As of last week, the agency held an average daily population of 30,733 in its jails. The internal budget documents reviewed by the AP show the Obama administration had intended to reduce those figures to 25,748 by March 31.
  
The White House did not comment immediately Friday on the higher number of immigrants released.
  
ICE spokesman Brian Hale said Friday the numbers of immigration detainees fluctuate daily, but he reiterated only several hundred illegal immigrants had been released.

"Beyond that normal movement, and as fiscal uncertainty remains over the continuing resolution and possible sequestration, ICE reviewed its detained population to ensure detention levels stay within ICE's current budget and placed several hundred individuals on methods of supervision less costly than detention," Hale said in a statement. "At this point, we don't anticipate additional releases, but that could change."

The immigrants who were released still eventually face deportation and are required to appear for upcoming court hearings. But they are no longer confined in immigration jails, where advocacy experts say they cost about $164 per day per person. Immigrants who are granted supervised release -- with conditions that can include mandatory check-ins, home visits and GPS devices -- cost the government from 30 cents to $14 a day, according to the National Immigration Forum, a group that advocates on behalf of immigrants.

The senior Homeland Security Department official in charge of arresting and deporting illegal immigrants announced his retirement to his staff on Tuesday, the same day the administration first openly confirmed the release of what it called several hundred immigrants. The executive associate director over ICE enforcement and removal operations, Gary Mead, told his staff he was leaving his job with mixed emotions. A career law enforcement officer, Mead will leave at the end of April.

After AP reported on Mead's retirement, ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said his decision was not related to criticism over the jail releases and said Mead had notified the agency's senior leaders "several weeks ago" that he intended to leave. She also called AP's reporting about Mead's departure "inaccurate and misleading." On Thursday, ICE corrected her statement to say that Mead has notified his bosses "more than a week ago," not several weeks ago.

The later government statement also criticized AP's reporting as "ill-informed, inaccurate information" and complained that AP had failed to contact the agency before publishing what it called a "misguided headline," although the AP had noted its unsuccessful efforts to contact Mead directly by telephone and email.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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