The All-Care Mess

January 8th, 2011

Dear Citizens of Fargo,

First and foremost, I am not Allcare Dental. I am a local dentist that practices in the community of Fargo/Moorhead. I was born and raised in Minot, ND. I graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Dentistry in Minneapolis, MN. My practice is Evergreen Dental. I enjoy living and working in the Fargo/Moorhead community.

All week long, I have been hearing stories from patients that used to go to All-Care Dental. It really breaks my heart to hear how so many patients were "snookered" by this big corporate dental enterprise. There was a gentleman that was supposed to get his dentures the last week of December and rescheduled for the first week of January only to find out that even now he can not even gain access to his dentures. Being honest, I have been worried about this corporate dental office ever since they came to town. Corporate facilities can focus on money more than what is in the best interest of the patient.

Here is the situation. Dental patient records are the property of the dental practice. Patients are allowed to request a copy of their records. In my discussions with the ND Board of Dentistry and Dr. Robert Bates (the CEO of All-Care) some issues have arisen. First and foremost the patients. If they are in the middle of treatment, then they need to have it completed. My worry with All-care"s situation is that they are going to file for bankruptcy. Patient charts are an integral part to how a dental office is valued. Therefore, my guess is that they probably will not be released until the bankruptcy proceedings are finalized. There is no way these patients can wait until a bankruptcy judge frees their records for them to continue on with their treatment. Many treatment issues can not wait that long.

My sole goal is to get these records out of the practice before they file for bankruptcy and all of the legal proceedings begin. If I can accomplish this, then the next step is to start copying these records and giving them to patients""so that they can find a local dentist and continue on with their treatment. Many of my colleagues have expressed an interest in helping these patients. The local dentists in Fargo/Moorhead are a great group of people.

A concern that I have moving forward is that I can not possibly bear the burden of this mess financially myself. I feel bad for the patients that have spent a lot of money with All-Care and now are faced with putting their name on a list of patients and vendors of 58 offices, that All-Care owes money to. Many of which probably will never see a dime of it back. On my end, if one of my colleages or I incur fees from our lab for completing a denture that"s in progress, it"s really hard for our practices to bear that cost for so many patients. I hope the patients of All-Care can understand that. I can not speak for my colleagues, but I feel bad about the situation and will discount the cost of finishing work that has partially been completed. It will have to be on a case by case basis to see what needs to be done and what this may cost our office and the patient.

Another concern that I have is that my office is going to be crazy trying to get all of this organized and figured out. We are busy trying to help the patients that we currently have. So please log onto my website www.evergreensmiles.com. I will have a section named All-Care. We will try to keep you updated on our progress and where and what you need to do to get copies of these records.

This situation is a horrible one for our community. But I have seen the people of Fargo/Moorhead rally around two floods recently and we always seem to find a way to get things straightened out and fixed. So I hope we can with this All-care Dental mess as well.

Sincerely,
Casey D. Fines, D.D.S.