ComplaintsforSchiernow Dental Care

• Initial Complaint

  10/11/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  I stopped going to this dental office about two years ago after multiple issues with the office. Every time I went it seemed that there was more and more procedures that they said were absolutely necessary for me and at one point I just didn't have the money. I went to another dentist and they rebuked everything Schiernow Dental Care told me and said that they probably were just looking for more insurance money. Today(10/11/2022), I received a statement in the mail from this business stating that I owed a balance of $245.80 from 8/31/2022. I haven't been to this office in over two years so I immediately called to see what this could be for. The woman I spoke with said I would have to call back as the billing department was busy. I called again an hour later, and the woman on the phone said yes that's your balance would you like to pay? I said no and I asked what was the balance for, she said she would check and then came back and said it must be a mistake and just to ignore it. I said I wasn't going to ignore it because I received a paper statement in the mail and I needed some kind of assurance that this was taken care of and as to why this happened. She said I would have to call back at a later time, as the billing department was now at lunch (3:00pm). No employee has been able to tell me what this statement was for and they did mention that they might have accidentally sent statements to a few patients who did not have work done. How can this happen and what about the patients who didn't call in and just paid an amount that wasn't really due? This business is extremely shady, unprofessional, and deceptive.

  Business response

  02/01/2023

  I have reviewed the information you provided. You are correct, the patient has not been seen in our office since 2021. There was a remaining balance on the account that should have been adjusted to $0. It was for the insurance portion. They paid less than expected and we should have just adjusted off the insurance balance. That is why the patient never received a request for payment from our practice. In August of 2022 we converted to a new practice management system. During the conversion, any open balances (both insurance and patient) moved to the new system. The insurance portion showed as a patient balance, that is incorrect. However, we found out after the statement was printed that the old balance appeared. This was an error on our part, the patient should not have received a statement. When the patient called, we informed them it was an error and adjusted the account to $0. We have been in business for over 50 years and would not intentionally send a false statement to a patient. All the major insurance providers offer their insurance to our patients, our records are audited on a regular basis. While I agree we made an error, we mailed out over ***** statements. It was strictly an oversight that the patient received a statement. We have never billed for services we did not provide. We may be imperfect, we see several hundred patients a day, however, we are not deceptive. I apologize that the account adjustment was not made earlier and will happily answer any questions the patient has. I printed a current statement, you can see the balance was adjusted to $0 in November.
  See Attachment/File: ******************* Statement 2_1_2023.pdf

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