Houston Dentistry Volume 1 Issue 3 The Texas Center for Occlusal Studies | Page 20

legal corner

PROTECTING YOUR

W

PERSONAL INFORMATION
by Jason T. Hirst

e all have some information that we’d like to keep private, and in our digital age it’s becoming more and more
difficult to do. Whether it’s our debts, our investments,
our cell phone number, or our home address, people that want
to discover them can often do so with just a few minutes and a
computer. And this isn’t just limited to hackers – anyone that
can enter a search in Google can usually find out more information about us than we feel comfortable with.

Dentists, even more than most other professions, have particular challenges in this arena. Dentists must maintain a license to
practice dentistry; they are business owners, employers, and
they are exposed to personal liability; they directly serve the
public, and they advertise with their personal name. And
because you serve the public, you want as much exposure as
possible and to have your name come up in searches. All of
these factors make it so that personal information – whether
you like it or not – is available all over the internet.
20 HOUSTON DENTISTRY | www.houstondentistrymagazine.com

Fortunately, with a knowledge of what information is public,
there are steps that you can take to reduce the amount of information that is made available and to make it less accessible.
Whether you are protecting yourself from creditors searching
for assets to seize, preventing identity theft, or avoiding displeased patients who will call you on your cell phone in the middle of the night, having control over who receives what personal
information is always a good thing.

As an attorney who works exclusively with dentists, I have seen
many of the numerous ways in which personal information
finds its way into the public domain. When a dentist is opening
a new office, or acquiring an existing one, there is a lot of data
that is disclosed to the public in the process, with a lot of information already out there. Some of this is legally required and
cannot be avoided, however usually more information is given
than is needed, and the effects of those disclosures can be minimized significantly.