Purpose

WADAP is intended to provide a public venue for patients to share their own firsthand experiences with dental providers, including concerns involving patient records, transparency, communication, retaliation, abandonment, billing issues, professional conduct, informed consent, continuity of care, negligence, malpractice concerns, documentation, and accountability.

The purpose of this policy is to promote patient speech, transparency, accountability, fairness, and responsible public discussion. WADAP is not intended to publish false claims, personal attacks, harassment, threats, or unsupported accusations. It is intended to document patient experiences, identify possible patterns, educate the public, and provide both patients and providers a fair process for addressing disputed information.

This policy applies to patient submissions, provider responses, correction requests, clarification requests, supporting documents, and any other materials submitted to WADAP for possible review, publication, correction, or removal.

Important Notice

WADAP is a patient-rights and public-accountability project. It is not a court, regulatory agency, law firm, medical provider, dental provider, or adjudicative body.

Content published on WADAP should not be understood as a final judicial finding, regulatory finding, medical conclusion, dental conclusion, or legal determination unless specifically identified as such.

Patient submissions may include personal experiences, opinions, concerns, allegations, interpretations, records, correspondence, litigation filings, regulatory complaints, and reasonable inferences based on those materials. Providers, practices, corporations, individuals, agencies, and entities named or discussed in a submission are presumed to dispute some or all allegations, concerns, interpretations, or conclusions unless they state otherwise.

This website is not legal advice, medical advice, dental advice, or a substitute for advice from a licensed attorney, physician, dentist, or other qualified professional. Patients and providers should consult appropriate professionals regarding their own facts, rights, obligations, deadlines, records, health care, complaints, claims, defenses, and legal options.

Patient Submissions

All patient submissions should be based on the patient's own personal experience and should be truthful to the best of the submitter's knowledge.

Submissions should focus on facts, timelines, records, communications, documents, treatment history, requests for records, responses received, missing information, billing issues, complaint history, and the patient's own opinions or reasonable concerns.

Patients should make reasonable efforts to separate:

• What they personally saw, heard, sent, received, or experienced
• What documents, records, emails, letters, messages, or filings show
• What they believe or infer from those materials
• What remains disputed, unknown, unresolved, or unproven
• What has been decided by a court, agency, regulator, arbitrator, or other official body, if anything

Submissions should avoid stating disputed matters as final facts unless they are supported by records, public documents, admissions, final agency action, court orders, judgments, or other reliable documentation.

Content Not Permitted

WADAP does not permit submissions or responses that are knowingly false, intentionally misleading, threatening, harassing, discriminatory, obscene, unrelated to a patient's actual experience, or designed primarily to intimidate, shame, or personally attack another person.

WADAP may decline, edit, remove, or refuse to publish content that includes:

• Knowingly false statements
• Unsupported accusations stated as final fact
• Threats, harassment, or abusive language
• Discriminatory or hateful content
• Private information about unrelated third parties
• Protected health information about another patient
• Financial account numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, insurance numbers, or other sensitive personal identifiers that are not necessary for publication
• Speculation about motives, intent, diagnosis, or misconduct that is not tied to records, communications, personal experience, or clearly identified opinion
• Content that may interfere with pending litigation, regulatory proceedings, privacy rights, or safety concerns
• Content that WADAP determines is outside the purpose of the project

Privacy and Redaction

Patients should carefully review anything they submit before sending it to WADAP.

Submissions may involve sensitive dental, medical, financial, legal, or personal information. Patients should not submit anything they do not want reviewed, stored, discussed, or potentially published.

Before submitting documents, patients should consider redacting unnecessary personal information, including home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, insurance identification numbers, account numbers, financial information, signatures, unrelated medical history, and information about other patients or third parties.

Patients should not submit dental records, medical records, photographs, x-rays, messages, or other documents belonging to another patient unless they have lawful authority to do so.

WADAP may redact, summarize, excerpt, decline, or remove sensitive material when appropriate. However, patients remain responsible for reviewing their own submissions and deciding what they are comfortable providing.

Supporting Documents

Patients are encouraged to provide supporting documents when available, including written record requests, certified-mail receipts, portal messages, emails, letters, billing records, treatment records, complaint filings, agency correspondence, court filings, timelines, and other materials relevant to the submission.

Supporting documents help distinguish firsthand experience, documented fact, opinion, concern, allegation, and reasonable inference.

WADAP may request additional information, clarification, records, or context before deciding whether to publish, edit, summarize, or decline a submission.

Submitting documents to WADAP does not guarantee publication.

Editorial Review

WADAP may review, decline, edit for formatting, edit for clarity, redact, summarize, excerpt, or remove submissions that do not comply with these guidelines.

Any edits will be intended to improve clarity, readability, formatting, privacy, fairness, or legal safety. Edits are not intended to change the substance of a patient's experience.

WADAP may also add editorial notes, status updates, disclaimers, links to provider responses, links to public filings, or clarifying language when appropriate.

WADAP is not required to publish every submission it receives.

WADAP may remove or revise published content if new information becomes available, if a correction is warranted, if a privacy concern is identified, if a legal concern arises, or if the content no longer fits the purpose of the project.

Provider Responses

Dental providers, practices, corporations, representatives, insurers, attorneys, agencies, and related entities identified in a patient submission may request a correction, clarification, update, or removal of content they believe is inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, outdated, improper, or missing important context.

Providers may also submit a written response for publication, so long as the response is professional, relevant, non-threatening, and does not disclose protected patient health information without proper authorization.

Provider responses should focus on factual clarification, documentation, context, procedural history, public records, or the provider's position regarding the issues raised.

Provider responses should not include threats, intimidation, personal attacks, irrelevant commentary, or protected health information unless the provider has obtained any legally required authorization and accepts responsibility for that disclosure.

WADAP may publish provider responses in whole, in part, in summarized form, or with redactions where appropriate.

Correction and Clarification Requests

WADAP welcomes good-faith corrections, clarifications, responses, and documentation from any patient, provider, practice, corporation, agency, attorney, representative, or other person or entity discussed on this website.

A correction or clarification request should identify:

• The specific statement at issue
• Why the statement is claimed to be inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, outdated, or improper
• The correction, clarification, or context being requested
• Any records, correspondence, public filings, agency materials, court documents, or other support for the request
• Whether the requester is asking for correction, clarification, update, removal, response publication, or some other action

WADAP will review good-faith correction and clarification requests and may update, revise, annotate, remove, or leave content unchanged depending on the information provided.

Submitting a correction request does not guarantee removal or revision of content.

Fairness Standard

WADAP's goal is to allow patients to speak truthfully and responsibly about their own experiences while also allowing providers and other involved persons or entities a meaningful opportunity to respond.

The guiding standard is not whether every person agrees with a submission. The guiding standard is whether the content is presented responsibly, grounded in personal experience or documentation, and framed clearly as fact, opinion, allegation, concern, interpretation, or unresolved dispute where appropriate.

Pending Litigation, Complaints, or Investigations

Some matters discussed on WADAP may involve pending litigation, regulatory complaints, public-record requests, patient-record requests, agency correspondence, insurance issues, or unresolved disputes.

Submissions involving pending matters should be especially careful to distinguish between allegations, opinions, disputed facts, documented facts, public records, and final decisions.

WADAP may update published content as cases, complaints, investigations, or disputes develop.

No Guarantee of Publication

Submission of a patient experience, provider response, correction request, document, or other material does not guarantee publication.

WADAP may decline publication for any reason, including privacy concerns, legal concerns, lack of relevance, lack of clarity, insufficient documentation, inappropriate content, inability to verify basic context, or inconsistency with the purpose of the project.

Consent to Review and Possible Publication

By submitting materials to WADAP, the submitter represents that the submission is truthful to the best of their knowledge, based on their own experience or lawfully obtained materials, and that they have the right to submit the information.

The submitter also understands that WADAP may review, store, edit, redact, summarize, excerpt, publish, decline, or remove submitted materials consistent with this policy.

If a submitter does not want certain information published, the submitter should clearly identify that information at the time of submission.

Contact and Updates

Requests for correction, clarification, provider response, removal, or update may be submitted through the contact method provided on the WADAP website.

WADAP may revise this policy from time to time as the project develops, including if WADAP begins accepting broader public submissions, forms a nonprofit entity, adds new submission tools, or changes its publication process.