David Hurst: More financial pain as Perth Dental Rooms patients forced to cough up additional money

Ripped-off victims of a corrupt Perth dentist are being asked to cough up almost $1000 each to access their own patient records as they try to claim against the professional indemnity insurance of now-deceased Dr David Hurst. The exorbitant fees have caused additional financial and mental distress to the patients who paid about $70,000 each for dental implants — funded from their superannuation accounts — but were left in pain with broken teeth. As revealed by The Sunday Times, more than 130 of Dr Hurst’s patients were left in limbo after his sudden death in December, with $2.36 million of their pre-payments discovered missing in the wake of the tragedy. Dr Hurst had been allowed to practice in Australia despite having a criminal record for fraud in the UK. Law firm Slater and Gordon, representing 42 of the patients trying to make insurance claims, has questioned the extraordinary fees being charged by Perth Dental Rooms for access to their historical dental records. The law firm claims the $990 bill per patient is 20 times higher than the typical cost of $50 and well above the $200 upper range. “We are deeply concerned by the approach taken in response to our lawful request for our clients’ personal information,” Slater and Gordon’s medical law practice leader Sarah Marshman told The Sunday Times. “Patients are entitled to access their own medical records. While a reasonable fee may be charged, this is meant to reflect actual administrative expenses, not to create a barrier to access for patients who are already out of pocket thousands of dollars.” According to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, “a health service provider may charge a fee for giving you access, but this charge can’t be excessive”, she added. Ms Marshman said Perth Dental Rooms, now under new ownership, referred to “poor record-keeping” under Dr Hurst and “multiple systems now involved” as key factors contributing to the size of the cost. She said it also conceded it could take up to a month to return the records. “Our concern is twofold. Firstly, that patients are being priced out of their own medical information by exorbitant fees dressed up as administrative costs,” Ms Marshman said. “Secondly, providers are attempting to shift blame for incomplete or inaccurate records onto prior ownership, rather than meeting their obligations. Patients should never have to pay close to $1000 just to access their own health history.” The new owner of Perth Dental Rooms, Kent Tan, said the fee applied “only to these complex legal requests from law firms”. He emphasised that patients could be sent their records at no cost. “What attracts a cost is needing to search available databases and provide a long list of items that the lawyers have requested and provide commentary on it,” he said. “Patients continue to receive their own records free of cost. That has always been the case and will continue. “What law firms are now requesting goes well beyond this: they are asking us to reconstruct complete patient histories across multiple systems, emails and hard copy files, which then must be reviewed by a senior dentist and our legal advisers to provide formal responses. With more than 40 requests (and counting) and a 14-day deadline, this has become a significant administrative and professional burden. “The fee . . . is not a charge to patients. It is a reasonable way of covering the time of staff, dentists and legal advisers so that we can continue focusing on caring for patients while still providing accurate and thorough records when required.” There was a major development in the liquidation of Dr Hurst’s former company, Hurst Group Pty Ltd, this week, with creditors — mostly dental patients — voting to remove liquidator Bryan Hughes and replace him with Jennifer Low. Mr Hughes has acknowledged he was unpopular among some patients in a recent report to creditors. “There is a vocal minority of creditors who are aggressively pursuing a recovery from (Dr Hurst’s) spouse, Ms Clara Hurst, and who believe I am either protecting her or not fulfilling my role competently when I advise them that the Company cannot pursue legal action without funding or without the necessary legal case having been satisfactorily defined,” he wrote. In his report, Mr Hughes revealed David Hurst transferred more than $1.5m from his company’s bank account into a mortgage offset account in the months after he and Ms Hurst splurged $6.5m on a Claremont mansion. The money, which included patient pre-payments for dental work, was from his company’s trading account into his mortgage offset account in the 10 months leading up to his death. Mr Hurst’s share in the luxury Spanish-style home, that he and his wife purchased in December 2023, automatically passed on his death to his widow as the surviving joint tenant. In the 18 months before he died, Dr Hurst also spent $209,000 of the company’s money on international travel. The company also borrowed $223,320 to purchase a Porsche Cayenne 3. Mr Hughes reported 220 unsecured creditors, which included the patients, were owed $3.6m by the company. Mr Hughes said he believed that Dr Hurst would have known his excessive drawings from the company would have left it with little working capital. “My investigations indicate that prepayments made by patients were not held in a separate bank account but rather were deposited into the company’s operating account where those funds were mixed with other trading receipts,” he added, and $3m in debt was accrued after it went insolvent. Mr Hughes said he did not believe Ms Hurst or anyone else suspected the company was insolvent as the business had previously generated millions of dollars of profit. The Sunday Times does not suggest any wrongdoing by Ms Hurst in relation to her late husband’s transfers of company money to the joint mortgage offset account.