The Iowa Dental Board has fined a Bettendorf dentist $5,000 for allegedly practicing in an unsafe manner.
The board alleges that in January 2023 it received a complaint about licensed dentist Darrell Ginsberg, who was practicing in Albia at the time.
According to the board, the complaint alleged that Ginsberg was the dentist, working for a company named Byte, who oversaw treatment related to a patient’s bite retainer. The patient claimed she experienced joint pain and a bite misalignment as a result of the retainers she received from the company, but there was never any direct communication between her and Ginsberg, which the board says was contrary to Byte’s business model.
The board recently charged Ginsberg with practicing dentistry in a manner that is harmful or detrimental to the public. The settlement calls for Ginsberg to accept a warning, pay a $5,000 civil penalty, and complete an unspecified number of hours of educational training on ethics.
Board records indicate that Ginsberg, who has been an Iowa-licensed dentist since 2019, no longer works from home for Byte or any other direct-to-consumer bite alignment company. The Iowa Capital Dispatch was unable to reach Ginsberg for comment.
In an unrelated case, the board recently imposed sanctions against dental assistant Cindy Roling of Farley, IA.
The board alleges that in October 2023, Roling self-reported consuming alcohol at work. She then signed a contract to participate in the Iowa Professional Health Program for impaired practitioners, which would have included routine substance testing. According to the board, Roling did not comply with the program’s testing requirements and then indicated her intent to withdraw from the program and surrender her license.
The board has accepted Roling’s surrender of her license with the understanding that she will be eligible to seek reinstatement of the license in one year.
Deputy Editor Clark Kauffman has worked during the past 30 years as both an investigative reporter and editorial writer at two of Iowa’s largest newspapers, the Des Moines Register and the Quad-City Times.
This article was originally published in the Iowa Capital Dispatch and republished by DrBicuspid under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. The Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence.
