The Crosley Law Firm, P.C. is representing patients, many of them children, in a Smile Center lawsuit.

In some cases, the parents of these children believe that they have been victims of substandard dental care leading to injuries and requiring additional treatment.

• Many of these parents were approached in parking lots and lured into Smile Center with the promise of dental exams for their children at no out-of-pocket cost to them;
• In most cases we have seen, the children were covered by Medicaid, and Smile Center would bill Medicaid directly.  Often the dental care consisted of pulpotomies and the placement of stainless steel crowns.
• For some of our clients, the dental work may have been unnecessary, and resulted in a large bill to Medicaid.
• In some instances, the injuries caused from the dental care necessitated visits to the emergency room and/or hospitalization.

See the the full smile care lawsuit story at WOAI.com for more information about some of our clients.  If you believe that you or your child was a victim of dental fraud or malpractice, and you are interested in more information, please click here for a free case review.

Following are two video reports conducted by Brian Collister of WOAI.com:

Video Transcript:
Children in severe pain, infections, and accusations of unnecessary dental work, the News 4 WOAI Troubelshooters have been getting complaints for months about a chain of dental offices here in San Antonio.

And those clinics are making millions off of your tax dollars.

Brian Collister has the results of his 6 month investigation.

REPORTER: 4 year old Ethan Gallegos has a mouth full of silver. His mother says the dentist here at this Smile Center on Blanco Road put her son through a lot of pain while capping 10 of his teeth last August.

MOTHER: they capped all 10 of his teeth that they said needed to be capped, I’d say within 30 maybe 40 minutes, so it was really, really quick.

REPORTER: days after the procedure, Ethan was in sever pain.

MOTHER: he was on the floor, screaming, crying, grabbing his cheek, shaking and basically telling me “I can’t take it anymore…it hurts.”

REPORTER: A few weeks later, doctors at the UT Dental School had to pull 7 of the 10 teeth that were capped at the Smile Dental Center, and treat Ethan for infections. Ethan’s mom, Yolanda, says she has been warning parents ever since.

MOTHER: Please don’t take them there….I don’t want them to go through what my son has already gone through.

REPORTER: Ethan’s story is a familiar one to Theresa Alvarez.

ALVAREZ: They look like they pulled all his teeth out and put silver teeth in.

REPORTER: Her 3 year old son, David, had 26 teeth capped at the same Smile Center by the same dentist. This is what he looked like when he got home (video shows photo of mouth with silver caps).

ALVAREZ: I mean, he looked like he had gotten beat up, like somebody had beat up my son. And like I literally walked in and I just cried.

REPORTER: David’s father has filed this complaint with the State Board of Dental Examiners against the Smile Center dentist. In the complaint, he says, his son got more treatment than actually needed and the work was sloppy, and requires attention.

In fact another dentist, who does not work at the Smile Center, later had to treat David for an infection. That same dentist also has to re-do 4 baby root canals and recap 16 crowns that had come loose. The dentist also had to scrape excess cement out of David’s mouth.

ALVAREZ: All they saw was glue in his mouth. He had glue in his mouth. When you look at a silver tooth you think it’s a little more polished. It was dirty because it was the cement they put on there.

REPORTER: Teresa says the Smile Center billed Medicaid $5,000 dollars for the work. Both moms are on Medicaid and were approached while shopping by a Smile Center employee. Our undercover producer talked to a Smile Center staffer at a Westside shopping center who. The staffer said most of their patients are on Medicaid.

SMILE CARE CENTER STAFFER: Medicaid covers everything. The majority of people we have use Medicaid.

REPORTER: In fact, Smile Center has made more than $26 Million dollars from Medicaid claims in San Antonio since 2007 according to records from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

Dentist Loren Alves is a member of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry. Dr Alves says he sees a lot of patients from the Smile Center because of what in his opinion is substandard and unnecessary dental work.

DR. LOREN ALVES: The crowns are coming off. The cement is being left in there to cause infection to the teeth. The kids are still in pain. And unfortunately, the parents don’t want to go back because of that overkill.

REPORTER: Tradis Kamara visited the Smile Center’s WW White location with her son Talib last October.

TRADIS KAMARA: Their true motivation is to get money, and they’re willing to sabotage our children in the process of doing it because they know we can’t do much about it,” Tradis told News 4 WOAI.

REPORTER: Dr Alves had to recap two of Talib’s teeth after both crowns came off. But it’s what happened during the procedure at Smile Center’s WW White location that enraged her.

KAMARA: He held his mouth open like an animal, and he was just drilling and drilling until a sharp needle – drill – went clean through my baby’s lip from one end to the other. “There was blood everywhere. They tried to suppress it and it’s like there’s blood seeping through the gauze. And you’re continuing to drill my baby’s mouth. It takes a parent beyond furious.

REPORTER: The Smile Center tells us the two dentists who worked on the children in our story are no longer with the dental chain.

The Smile Center is owned by Doctor Stephen Simpton. In a written statement the Smile Center told us, “We have served more than 45,000 patients over an 11-year period, for which we have received normal and customary compensation from Medicaid. The Smile Center dental treatment and billing procedures have never been questioned by any local, state or federal authority.”

As for all the kids we’ve seen with their mouths full of silver caps, the Smile Center says, “We work to preserve the primary teeth, often utilizing a crown to create a barrier to prevent further decay and to protect the tooth buds of the underlying permanent teeth. Unfortunately, not all teeth can be saved and may ultimately require extraction.”

The Smile Center also told us, “We take great pride in both the level of professionalism within our company ranks and the fact that no dentist on the Smile Center team has any form of official complaint, sanction or disciplinary action on their records with the Texas State Board of Dental Examiners.”

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