The Governor of Washington, the Washington State Attorney General, the Washington State Dental Quality Assurance Commission, the Washington State Department of Health, state and federal legislators, patient-rights advocates, legal organizations, professional oversight bodies, members of the media, and the public.
Important Notice and Publication Context
This open letter reflects my personal experience, opinions, concerns, records, correspondence, litigation filings, regulatory filings, public materials, and the reasonable inferences I believe arise from those materials.
Nothing in this letter should be understood as a final judicial finding, regulatory finding, medical conclusion, dental conclusion, or legal determination unless specifically identified as such.
Providers, practices, corporations, individuals, agencies, and entities referenced in this letter are presumed to dispute some or all allegations, concerns, interpretations, or conclusions unless they state otherwise.
This letter is intended to advocate for patient rights, transparency, public oversight, and reform. It is not legal advice, medical advice, dental advice, or a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney, physician, dentist, or other qualified professional.
Why I Am Publishing This Letter
I am writing this open letter because I have serious concerns about the fairness, transparency, and effectiveness of the dental complaint process in Washington State, the enforcement of patient-record rights, and whether existing oversight systems are adequately protecting patients.
This is not only about one patient, one dentist, one dental office, or one complaint.
This is about whether Washington's dental disciplinary process gives patients a meaningful opportunity to have serious concerns reviewed, relevant records considered, providers contacted when appropriate, and decisions explained in a way that allows the patient and the public to understand how the outcome was reached.
In my view, a complaint process that allows a matter to be closed after what appears to be only a cursory threshold review, without investigation, without contacting the provider, without obtaining relevant records, and without giving the patient a meaningful explanation creates a serious risk of unfairness.
It is also deeply concerning when complaints are closed using vague phrases such as "no violation at the time the event occurred" or "the information did not rise to the threshold to reopen the case," without explaining what threshold was applied, who applied it, what facts were accepted or rejected, what evidence was considered insufficient, or why the complaint did not warrant investigation.
It leaves the patient unable to understand what was reviewed, what was not reviewed, what standard was applied, who made the decision, what evidence was considered material, and why serious concerns did not meet the threshold for further investigation.
That should concern every patient in Washington.
It should concern the Governor.
It should concern the Department of Health.
It should concern the Legislature.
It should concern the Attorney General's Office.
It should concern the media.
And it should concern every ethical dental professional who believes the profession is strengthened by transparency, accuracy, accountability, and public trust.
The Core Problem: Patients Cannot Meaningfully Challenge a Closed Process
The Dental Commission's purpose is supposed to be public protection. But public protection cannot exist without a process that meaningfully reviews patient complaints, evaluates relevant records, contacts appropriate witnesses or providers when necessary, and gives patients a fair explanation of how serious concerns were evaluated.
In my recent Dental Commission matters, I was informed that the only information in the case file was what I submitted. I was also informed that the case was not investigated and that no further information was obtained.
That means, as I understand it, the Commission closed the complaint without contacting the dentist, without obtaining records from the provider, without requesting an explanation from the provider, and without independently reviewing the underlying records that could confirm, disprove, or clarify the issues I raised.
That is deeply troubling.
It also gives the appearance that serious patient complaints may be screened out through a cursory review process or an unusually high investigation threshold that is not clearly explained to the patient. If the Commission applies a threshold standard before opening an investigation, patients should be told what that threshold is, how it was applied, and why the specific facts submitted did not meet it.
A vague closure reason is not a meaningful explanation. A patient cannot understand, evaluate, or challenge a decision when the explanation does not identify the standard applied, the facts considered, the evidence found insufficient, or the reason the allegations did not warrant further review.
If a patient submits a complaint involving treatment concerns, documentation concerns, informed-consent concerns, continuity-of-care concerns, record-integrity concerns, or other serious issues, the Commission should not be able to close the matter based only on a threshold review of the patient's submission while never contacting the provider and never obtaining the provider's records.
A closed process creates a serious imbalance. The patient is left without knowing what standard was applied, what facts were accepted or rejected, what evidence was considered material, who made the decision, and why the complaint did not warrant investigation.
That is not meaningful public protection.
It is especially concerning when a patient later obtains records, communications, or other materials that appear to raise new or additional concerns, yet the reconsideration process still does not result in a meaningful investigation.
A patient should not be forced to guess why a complaint was closed.
A patient should not be forced to accept a conclusory "no violation" determination without a clear explanation of what was reviewed and why.
A patient should not be told, in substance, that the complaint was not investigated and then be expected to trust that serious concerns were meaningfully evaluated.
The Separate Risk: Undisclosed Provider Records in Disciplinary Matters
There is also a separate structural problem that should be addressed.
When a provider does submit records to a disciplinary body, the patient should be told what categories of records were submitted and should have a meaningful opportunity to review, compare, verify, and respond to those records, subject only to lawful and narrowly defined exceptions.
A provider's chart should not be treated as self-proving simply because it was submitted by the provider. Dental records are created by people, maintained in electronic systems, exported by people, and sometimes corrected, amended, supplemented, reconstructed, or selectively produced.
When the integrity, completeness, accuracy, or timing of records is disputed, the Commission should have procedures to obtain and review source-level evidence where appropriate, including audit logs, metadata, access logs, edit histories, transmission records, referral communications, email headers, deleted-item records, and other electronic source records.
This issue is not limited to my complaint. It is a broader patient-protection issue.
Patients should not be excluded from the evidentiary process in matters involving their own treatment, their own records, their own body, and their own complaint.
Why This Matters
A complaint process can fail patients in more than one way.
It can fail by closing a complaint without investigation.
It can fail by not contacting the provider.
It can fail by not obtaining the relevant records.
It can fail by not giving the patient a meaningful explanation.
It can fail by ignoring new evidence.
It can fail by treating serious concerns as insufficient without explaining why.
It can fail by applying an unclear or unusually high threshold for investigation.
It can fail by conducting only a cursory review of serious allegations.
It can fail by using vague closure language that does not explain the actual basis for the decision.
And in cases where provider records are submitted, it can fail by relying on records the patient has never seen, cannot compare to prior versions, and cannot verify through independent evidence.
These are not minor procedural concerns. They go to the heart of whether a disciplinary system actually protects the public.
If a patient raises serious concerns about treatment, informed consent, documentation, record access, or record integrity, the Commission should have a process capable of determining whether those concerns deserve investigation.
A system that closes complaints without investigation and without meaningful explanation risks creating the appearance of oversight while leaving patients without a meaningful path to accountability.
My Experience and Why It Illustrates a Larger Concern
In my opinion, my experiences with Bridle Trails Dentistry and Redmond Endodontics illustrate this larger failure.
In my opinion, both providers have failed to produce or fully account for complete medical and dental records I requested, including records and communications I believe are material to my care, my complaints, and my ability to verify what happened.
My concerns are based on my records, correspondence, litigation filings, regulatory complaints, patient-record requests, the records produced, the records not produced, the communications provided or withheld, and the reasonable inferences I believe arise from those materials.
The records and communications at issue are not meaningless paperwork. They concern disputed treatment, disputed referral communications, disputed chart entries, disputed timing, disputed events, and records and communications that, in my opinion, raise serious questions about negligence, malpractice, documentation integrity, and whether certain records were incomplete, inaccurate, altered, reconstructed, or misleading.
These are precisely the kinds of issues that should not be dismissed through a closed threshold process where the provider is not contacted, records are not obtained, and the patient is not given a meaningful explanation of why the complaint did not warrant investigation.
RCW 70.02 and the Failure of Practical Enforcement
This problem is made worse when patient-record-access laws do not provide practical, immediate, and meaningful enforcement.
RCW 70.02 is supposed to give Washington patients access to their health care information. But in practice, that right can become nearly meaningless when a provider ignores written requests, provides only partial records, fails to account for missing records, refuses to identify whether records exist, ignores certified letters, ignores counsel correspondence, or forces the patient to file a lawsuit simply to obtain records that should have been produced without litigation.
A statutory right without meaningful consequences can become a paper tiger.
A patient may have the right to records on paper, but if the provider refuses, delays, ignores, or provides only selected documents, the burden shifts almost entirely to the patient. The patient may have to file a lawsuit, pay filing fees, arrange service, prepare motions, seek court orders, request sanctions, and continue pushing the court to enforce a right that should not have required litigation in the first place.
Most patients do not have the time, money, legal knowledge, emotional endurance, or practical ability to become civil litigants simply to obtain their own dental or medical records.
A patient-record-access statute should not depend on whether the patient is willing and able to fight alone.
Washington should strengthen RCW 70.02 so that providers face real, automatic, financial, and professional consequences when they fail to timely produce patient records, fail to lawfully account for missing records, fail to respond to written requests, or force patients into unnecessary litigation.
The Link Between Record Access and the Commission Process
The Commission process and RCW 70.02 must be viewed together.
A patient cannot meaningfully participate in a complaint process if the patient cannot obtain complete records. The Commission cannot fairly evaluate serious concerns if it does not obtain relevant records, contact the provider when appropriate, or explain how the complaint was evaluated. The Legislature cannot claim patients have meaningful record-access rights if providers can ignore those rights with little or no immediate consequence.
A patient should not have to file a lawsuit simply to find out what happened in their own treatment.
A patient should not have to obtain a court order simply to receive records they are legally entitled to request.
A patient should not have to fight through default, sanctions, contempt, and repeated motions just to force a provider to do what the law already required.
And when a provider does submit records to a disciplinary body, a patient should not be locked out of the evidentiary process involving their own care and their own records.
That is the broader loophole.
The provider may control the records. The Commission may close the complaint without investigation. The patient may be left fighting separately to obtain the records needed to understand what happened. And the public may be told the matter is closed even though no meaningful investigation occurred.
That is not a functioning patient-rights system.
That is not meaningful professional accountability.
That is not public protection.
Needed Reforms to the Dental Commission Process
The Commission should adopt procedures that prevent serious patient complaints from being closed without meaningful review, meaningful explanation, and appropriate investigation.
At minimum, the process should be changed to require the following:
- Patients should be told whether a complaint was investigated or only screened.
- Patients should be told whether the complaint was closed after screening, threshold review, staff review, panel review, Commission review, or investigation.
- Patients should be told whether the provider was contacted.
- Patients should be told whether records were obtained from the provider.
- Patients should be told what categories of information were reviewed.
- The Commission should clearly explain the threshold used to decide whether a complaint warrants investigation.
- Closure letters should identify the actual reason for closure in plain language, not vague shorthand.
- Closure letters should explain why the facts submitted did not meet the investigation threshold.
- Closure letters should identify whether the decision was made by staff, a reviewing member, a panel, or the full Commission.
- Patients should be given a meaningful explanation of why a complaint did or did not meet the threshold for investigation.
- Patients should be given a meaningful opportunity to submit new evidence before final closure where appropriate.
- Patients should be told what reconsideration standard applies and what kind of new evidence may justify reopening.
- Reconsideration requests based on newly obtained records should be evaluated carefully and should not be dismissed without explanation.
- Complaints involving record integrity, informed consent, continuity of care, abandonment, retaliation, or serious documentation concerns should be treated as serious patient-protection issues.
- If a provider submits records, patients should be notified what categories of records were submitted.
- Patients should have access to records submitted about them, subject only to lawful and narrowly defined exceptions.
- Providers should be required to identify whether submitted records are original, amended, corrected, reconstructed, exported, altered, supplemented, or created after the events at issue.
- When record integrity is disputed, the Commission should obtain audit logs, metadata, access logs, edit histories, transmission records, referral communications, email headers, deleted-item records, and other source-level electronic evidence where appropriate.
- The Commission should not treat partial productions, screenshots, narrative summaries, or selectively exported chart notes as complete proof.
- The Commission should treat allegations involving false, altered, reconstructed, incomplete, or misleading patient records as serious independent record-integrity issues.
- The Commission should not assume that a provider's chart is reliable simply because it was created or maintained by a licensed professional.
Patients should not have to become investigators, litigants, records-forensics analysts, and civil plaintiffs just to obtain their own medical or dental records or have serious complaints meaningfully reviewed.
Needed Reforms to RCW 70.02
Washington should strengthen patient-record-access rights by adding meaningful enforcement mechanisms, including:
- Clear statutory deadlines with real consequences for noncompliance
- Mandatory written explanations when requested records do not exist, cannot be found, are withheld, or are maintained elsewhere
- Default penalties for failure to respond
- Statutory damages for unreasonable delay or nonproduction
- Fee-shifting for patients forced to litigate to obtain records
- Stronger remedies for incomplete productions
- Stronger remedies when providers fail to account for missing records
- Professional consequences for repeated or intentional noncompliance
- Clear rules requiring providers to preserve metadata, audit logs, and electronic source records once a dispute, complaint, preservation request, or records request has arisen
Without real consequences, patient rights can become optional.
Without automatic enforcement, providers can treat patient-record requests as suggestions.
And when unresolved record-access issues overlap with a disciplinary complaint, the danger becomes obvious: the patient may be unable to obtain the records needed to understand, verify, challenge, or supplement the complaint process or even start the process.
I am calling on the Governor of Washington to open an independent investigation or appoint an independent task force to review the Washington State Dental Quality Assurance Commission, the Department of Health's oversight of dental complaints, and whether the current process is fulfilling its public-protection mission.
The question should be direct:
Is the Dental Commission meaningfully protecting patients, or does its current process allow serious complaints to be closed after cursory threshold reviews, vague closure explanations, unclear standards, inadequate investigation, and little meaningful accountability?That investigation should examine whether the Commission's procedures are structurally fair, whether patients are being meaningfully included in the complaint process, whether complaints are being closed after cursory threshold reviews, whether the threshold for investigation is too high or too unclear, whether complaints are being closed without contacting providers, whether complaints are being closed without obtaining records, whether closure reasons are vague or conclusory, whether patients are being given meaningful explanations, and whether allegations of false, altered, reconstructed, incomplete, or misleading patient records are being properly reviewed.
The Governor should not assume that the Commission is functioning simply because it exists.
The Department of Health should not assume that a closed complaint means the public was protected.
The Legislature should not assume that RCW 70.02 is meaningful if patients must sue providers simply to obtain records that should have been produced without litigation.
A regulatory body that claims to protect the public must be willing to prove that its process actually protects the public.
The Governor should appoint an independent task force with authority to review Commission complaint procedures, closed complaint files, provider submissions, patient communications, record-integrity allegations, complaint outcomes, reconsideration procedures, threshold-review standards, closure-letter practices, and whether the Commission has failed to identify or address systemic issues within the dental complaint process.
That task force should include patient-rights advocates, health care transparency experts, legal professionals, electronic-records specialists, members of the public, and individuals independent of the dental professional culture being reviewed.
It should not be controlled by the same professional culture it is supposed to examine.
- The Dental Commission should change its procedures.
- The Department of Health should review whether the current complaint process provides real patient protection.
- The Governor should order an independent review of the Commission's complaint process.
- The Legislature should examine whether RCW 70.02 and the Dental Commission's complaint procedures provide real patient protection or merely the appearance of protection.
- The Legislature should strengthen RCW 70.02 so that providers face real, automatic, financial, and professional consequences when they refuse to produce patient records, fail to account for missing records, ignore statutory requests, or force patients into unnecessary litigation.
- The Attorney General's Office should examine whether patients are being left without meaningful enforcement mechanisms when health care providers refuse to produce records.
- Patient-rights advocates should demand transparency, patient access, and meaningful participation in disciplinary proceedings involving their own care and records.
- The media should investigate whether Washington patients are being denied meaningful access to their own records and whether professional disciplinary systems are closing complaints without investigation, without contacting providers, without obtaining relevant records, or without giving patients meaningful explanations.
- The public should demand a system where patient rights are real, records are transparent, complaints are meaningfully reviewed, and professional accountability is not defeated by closed processes, unexplained decisions, vague thresholds, or unavailable records.
Patients should not receive vague closure language where meaningful explanation is required. A patient who submits a serious complaint should be told whether the complaint was investigated, who reviewed it, what threshold was applied, what evidence was considered, and why the allegations did not warrant further action.
The Commission cannot fulfill its public-protection mission if its process allows serious complaints to be closed without investigation and without meaningful explanation.
A disciplinary system that closes complaints without contacting the provider, without obtaining records, and without explaining how serious concerns were evaluated is not a fair process.
Patients should not be forced to trust a system that tells them the matter is closed while also telling them the matter was not investigated.
Publication Notice and Correction Policy
This open letter reflects my personal experience, opinions, concerns, and good-faith interpretation of records, correspondence, litigation filings, regulatory filings, public materials, and events known to me.
It is intended to advocate for patient rights, transparency, public oversight, and reform.
WADAP welcomes good-faith corrections, clarifications, responses, or documentation from any person, provider, practice, agency, or entity discussed on this website.
If any statement is inaccurate, incomplete, outdated, or missing important context, I will review the information in good faith and update the site where appropriate.
Providers, individuals, agencies, or entities who believe any statement is inaccurate may request a correction, provide documentation, or submit a response for review or publication.