Worcester County Dental Clinic

The right dental health partner for you is the dentist who is wholly concerned with your overall health and not the health of his pocketbook. Dr. Corey Smith seems to be the latter category of dentists. Our recent experience with Dr. Corey Smith's dental practice has been rather disappointing to say the least. My husband and I had full set X-rays done by the hygienist in Dr. Smith's office during our last visit and our insurance did not cover it because Dr. Smith routinely wants to give all his patients full set X-rays every three years regardless of ones health and our insurance covers the full-set X-rays every five years. So we receive a bill from Dr. Smith's office stating that we owe $260 for the X-rays. Well, I was quite surprised to see that Dr. Smith was charging us the full provider fee, because Dr. Smith signed a legally binding agreement with our dental insurance provider, United Concordia, to only bill patients no more than the Maximum Allowable Charge amount of $64 for each of us. So Dr. Smith's office was billing us over twice the amount that we should have been charged. I immediately called Dr. Smith's office and Meghan answered the phone and I explained that billing error and asked her to correct it. She told me that they can charge me whatever they want and I have to pay it. I tried explaining to her that Dr. Smith signed an agreement to discount his fee for all non-covered services. She told me that she is all alone in the office and didn't have time to deal with this and hung up. Well, then I made a call to United Concordia, and spoke with the customer service rep and explained to her what happened. She put me on hold and called Dr. Smith's office. After being on hold for a while she got back to me and said that Meghan was being very argumentative with her on the phone and refused to listen to her. The customer service rep was shocked and said that this was no error on the part of Dr. Smith's office since the EOB (Explanation of Benefits) specifically states that they can charge no more than the current Maximum Allowable Charge. So the customer service rep ended sent a letter to Dr. Smith's office specifically stating that they can only charge us no more that $64 each for the X-rays. Dr. Smith's office finally corrected the bill because they had no choice. One has to wonder how many other patients of his are they more than double billing. Most patients would have probably gone ahead and paid the $260 but I actually pay attention to details and made a call to my dental insurance company to ask what the Maximum Allowable Charge schedule is. Had I not done that I would have never known. Dr. Smith purchased his dental practice from another dentist, and appears to be inflating the margins and inflating the value of the practice with unnecessary diagnostic procedures and then over-billing uninformed patients. Needless to say, we are going back to our old dentist. Worth the long drive to have an honest dentist!!!