Texas State Auditor
SAO: Reports:
An Audit Report on the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners
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John Keel, CPA Texas State Auditor SAO: Reports: An Audit Report on the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners |
August 2005
Report Number 05-050
Gaps in the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners' (Agency) processes for disciplining licensees and issuing new licenses weaken the Agency's ability to ensure that only qualified practitioners hold licenses. Specifically, the Agency does not enforce sanctions against licensees who have violated professional standards. Also, between June 1998 and April 2005, it used incomplete information to determine whether new licensees had been convicted of crimes that directly relate to their profession. Auditors' testing of complete criminal histories for 1,137 individuals who were licensed between September 2003 and February 2005 identified 6 with past convictions that the Agency should have investigated during the licensing process. These gaps could put patients at risk of being the victims of repeated violations.
The Agency did not ensure that the State received fair value for two contracts despite significant economic impact to the State and the importance of the services to the Agency's operations. Because the applicants-not the Agency-pay these vendors directly, the Agency was not required by either statute or rule to use a competitive process to select the vendors. The vendors involved received approximately $650,000 for Texas licenses in fiscal year 2004 and the first six months of fiscal year 2005 from applicants for Texas licenses. However, the Agency is accurately managing, monitoring, and reporting its financial resources.
Opportunities exist for the Agency to improve the management and accuracy of the four databases it uses to track information about its licensees: licensing, enforcement, legal, and compliance. In addition, the Agency does not have a plan to discontinue the use of its old enforcement database after it implements the new one, and it does not ensure that licensees' information is correct before entering it in the licensing database.
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