Winter 99 PCSO Oral History Project

  This interview with Dr. Ted Harper, Jr. is part of the PCSO Oral History Project’s continued effort to preserve the history of the PCSO by interviewing senior members of our orthodontic community. Dr. Norman Wahl conducted an extensive interview with Dr. Harper discussing his schooling in orthodontics, his private practice, and his experiences in orthodontic politics. This article contains selections from that interview. — Ed.

 Dr. Wahl (DW): I understand you completed the orthodontic program at the University of North Carolina in 1955. Did they teach predominantly labiolingual?

Dr. Harper (DH): No. It was predominantly edgewise.

DW: Then how did you get into labiolingual?

DH: Our program exposed us to labiolingual, twin wire, the Crozat appliance, and to functional appliances, primarily the Norwegian monobloc.

DW: When you started practicing, did you go directly to Spokane?

DH: No, I went back home to Des Moines, Iowa. I knew my name was coming up for the draft, so I went back to my hometown and worked for my orthodontist uncle, Dr. Hoffer. I enlisted and waited for the call. I went into the Army and did nothing but orthodontics for two years in Japan.

DW: What year was that?

DH: ’56 and ’57.

DW: About how long had the Army been doing orthodontics?

DH: Not very long. It was only being done for overseas dependents.

DW: Did they let you do standard edgewise?

DH: Yes.

DW: Then where did you go after your service?

DH: I came to Washington state and began my practice in the Spokane Valley and that was in January of 1958.

DW: How did you become active in the society?

DH: Well, I was asked to serve on different committees, and then to be president of the Northern Component (Now called the Northern Region of the PCSO). After I completed that, I was nominated and ran for election to the Board. Then I was asked to run for vice-president of the PCSO.

DW: Do you remember any of the issues that came up while you were president of the component?

DH: What sticks in my mind as the biggest thing was to develop state societies as components of the Pacific Coast and the AAO. I organized the state societies in the Northern Component before any other state was organized. The first was Oregon, then Idaho and Washington came along shortly thereafter. Alaska and the provinces were strongly encouraged to do this but they didn’t have quite the same need until later.

DW: Third-party payment for orthodontics continues to be an issue for orthodontists. Did you personally have any dealings with third-party methods of payment?

DH: At one point, the AAO began to promote direct reimbursement. I went with a representative from the AAO to talk to corporations in our area. The corporation that I volunteered to talk to was Washington Water Power.

DW: Did Washington Water Power go through with DR?

DH: No, they did not. In fact, the AAO representative and I went to talk with them but they gave us some kind of junior officer. We took all the material and spent a couple of hours detailing everything but we never had any response whatsoever. In retrospect, it seems that they had the attitude that I was there to promote myself, rather than trying to find out the value of what we were trying to present.

DW: Besides DR, were there plans such as we know today, the PPOs or HMOs?

DH: Well, there was no such thing in those days. There were plans available through an insurance company like Aetna. Patients received a $800 to $1,500 lifetime benefit for orthodontics.

DW: Generally speaking, do you think those plans have had an adverse effect on patients?

DH: I don’t think it’s all been negative because perhaps some people would never have been treated otherwise. They didn’t want to lose something that was free, so they went ahead. And most people seemed to appreciate the partial coverage they had. There was one plan that was outstanding. It was called The Teamsters Trust. No insurance company intermediary. Payment was usual and customary; they didn’t quibble, and they were very easy to work with. But apparently politics has eliminated that plan.

DW: What additional issues came up in the PCSO that you did not come across in your Northern component? In one of the PCSO Bulletins during your term in the PCSO, you were quoted in a discussion of closed panels.

DH: Well, closed panels were a topic of discussion. At one time, that was the way the corporations were moving. But then the insurance industry jumped in and filled the gap, I guess. But corporations were even working with bootleg orthodontics - dentists practicing orthodontics without specialty training.

DW: Why would these corporations and insurance companies want unqualified people to do the work, if there were so many qualified orthodontists available?

DH: To control their costs.

DW: So they’d be working for a lower salary?

DH: Exactly. Say you’re running a corporation and responsible for the dental health care of your employees and their families. If it comes time to downsize your company, you cut every department, and dentistry is part of it. But you know, high speed production doesn’t lower the cost. It increases the cost because the quality is not there.However, Norm, I understand that we’re going to take another run at direct reimbursement for all of dental care. It may turn out to be a great thing for both the public and the practitioner. (Marketing the benefits of DR to employers has since become a major and successful effort of the ADA)

DH: Another effort that began just before my tenure as president of the PCSO was the development of the Policy and Procedure Manual. My predecessor, Harley Odden (Oakland, Calif.), started development of the manual. I continued it, and then Harvey Spears continued after me. It was also during my tenure that the Bulletin radically changed its appearance.

DW: Let’s see, that was ’72, when Bill Parker took over as PCSO editor.

DH: Before that, the Bulletin was more like a newsletter. Then it became a pamphlet and then a small booklet. It had mostly news of members, necrology, and things like that. Occasionally the editor would write an article on some phase of orthodontics, or he would write about one of the orthodontic departments. When Parker took it over it became a professional publication. Then we started having advertisers, features, and gained a large circulation. I think Parker held it three or four years. A member from La Jolla, Calif., Wayne Watson, took it then. He was so successful, it started getting worldwide attention. He later became editor of the AJO.

DW: It certainly is an attention-getter today.

DH: I’ll tell you another thing that was significant during my time. We did make an increased effort to involve our Canadian friends in the PCSO, particularly in the Northern Component.

Another thing we were concerned about was the flourishing business of "hotel courses"—teaching the use of appliances outside the ADA-recognized programs. I suspect the federal people will encourage non-ADA-trained people in managed care for a while, until the public catches on.

If I had to do it again, I think I would have made a stronger appeal directly to the American Dental Association to regulate courses.

Sometimes the people who were putting on the courses didn’t care whether they belonged to the ADA or not. Or perhaps we could have appealed to the ADA members who were taking these courses. We didn’t know how to go about it. It caused division among some of our officers.

Speaking of division, at that time there were a number of confrontations between groups of orthodontists. Probably the most famous was the tugs and pulls between northern and southern California.

DW: Yes, I’ve heard of it.

DH: Or between the universal and the edgewise people. The Tweed and the Illinois people. During my year we were able to soften a lot of it. The year afterward, the nonextraction advocates and the extraction camp were able to negotiate their feelings, and we came together as an organization.

We learned to respect each other regardless of what area we were in, regardless of what study club we were in, regardless of what kind of bracket we used. It was important to unite all the orthodontists within the PCSO because we had bigger things to think about, e.g., third parties, government intervention and dentists bootlegging orthodontics.

DW: What’s ahead for orthodontics?

DH: I think magnetics may be helping us with orthodontic correction. The biggest opportunity, of course, is in molecular biology. Maybe I’ll be gone before that really kicks in.

Speaking of innovations, I remember Dr. [John R.] Thompson saying to us one time when they started coming out with preformed bands, "This is interesting. Now we’ve got preformed bands, which could lead to preformed thinking." He also said, "Just think, if it had been the other way around and you had preformed bands first, and all of a sudden somebody came along with an instrument where you could pinch a custom band and eliminate the big inventory of preforms, everybody would have been real excited, and said, ‘Wow, that’s really great!’"

Previous Article               Next Article

Top of the Page

Copyright © 1999 - 2006 Pacific Coast Society of Orthodontists. All Rights Reserved.

Please review our legal notices and privacy policy.

Created by WebResults.