Regulators Seek Fine for Dental Firm

State regulators said Friday that they are asking the courts to fine Western Dental Services Inc. $3 million and to transfer the dental health plan into receivership for failing to correct alleged “quality-of-care” problems.

Western Dental--owned in part by retired entrepreneur Dr. Robert F. Beauchamp Jr., the self-styled “credit dentist”--for years resisted state regulators’ demands that it correct “very serious deficiencies” in its dental services, California Corporations Commissioner Keith Bishop charged Friday.

The company defended its care and objects to regulators’ characterization of it.

In seeking the agency’s largest-ever fine against a health maintenance organization, Bishop faulted the plan for numerous alleged violations involving quality of care and related matters. Western owns more than 100 dental offices across California and serves 250,000 members.

Emphasizing the view that the problems aren’t limited to a few cases, Bishop said, “The deficiencies are systemic.”

Bishop said this is the first time the agency has sought to have a financially sound health plan transferred into receivership because of allegations of substandard care. Receivership is normally sought for an entity on the verge of bankruptcy.

He alleged that some patients received excessive treatment, failed to receive specialist care and were left unattended while undergoing oral surgery. Decisions involving dental care, he alleged, have been “improperly influenced by fiscal and administrative considerations.”

He noted the instance of one patient who did not require dental care but received two fillings anyway and later developed complications.

Western executives could not be reached for comment.

In a prepared statement, however, Robert C. Shur, the company’s president, said the company “emphatically disagrees with the position of the Department of Corporations and believes DOC’s rush to litigation is premature.”

He said the agency’s recent audit of the company “relied on a few, specific examples to draw general conclusions that do not fairly or fully represent our services.”

He said the company has put in place “an aggressive plan that put our services above and beyond the issues raised by the DOC” and said the company had sought to settle the issues with the agency.

Corporations Department officials said Western’s problems with state regulators date to 1988.

Beauchamp, 83, who lives in Newport Beach, built a reputation as a maverick dentist in the 1940s and 1950s.