Independent watchdog project. Not affiliated with the State of California, DHCS or Medi-Cal Dental.
Not the State of California
Every dental plan in this program is required by law to appoint a named, licensed dentist who answers for its clinical decisions and personally handles quality of care complaints. Finding a dentist in these networks is hard enough. Finding the dentist in charge turns out to be harder.
The job exists because the law says so
A dental plan is a company. Companies are run by executives, and executives answer to owners. California decided that was not a safe arrangement for deciding whether somebody gets a root canal, so it required something else: a named dentist, inside the plan, whose job is to stand between the clinical decision and the balance sheet.
The rule is short, it has been on the books since 1994, and it applies to every dental plan in the program.
While you look for the dentist in charge, meet the man who is happy to explain.
The regulation
Each PHP and PCCM plan shall appoint a physician as medical director and each dental plan shall appoint a dentist as dental director.
The same section then lists what the job involves. All six of these are the dental director's responsibility, and the regulation says the list is a floor, not a ceiling.
Duty one
Ensuring dental decisions are rendered by qualified dental personnel, unhindered by fiscal or administrative management.
Duty two
Ensuring the dental care provided meets the standards for acceptable dental care.
Duty three
Ensuring dental protocols and rules of conduct for plan personnel are followed.
Duty four
Developing and implementing dental policy.
Duty five
Resolving dental quality of care related grievances, and referring other grievances to the grievance coordinator.
Duty six
Actively participating in the functioning of the plan grievance procedures.
Read duty one again
Unhindered by fiscal or administrative management. The regulation anticipates, in writing, that a plan's finance and admin side might lean on a clinical decision, and it makes one named dentist responsible for seeing that it does not.
The contract
The state's standard dental managed care contract repeats the regulation and tightens it.
That last requirement is the interesting one. The state wants to know within ten days if the person holding this job changes. Members are not told at all.
Source: DHCS Dental Managed Care boilerplate contract, Exhibit A, Attachment 2, Organization and Administration of the Plan, sections F and G.
Where this connects
Duty five is resolving quality of care grievances. Duty six is actively participating in the grievance procedures. The DHCS contract says the same thing from the other direction: grievances about quality of care shall be referred to the Contractor's Dental Director.
So when a Medi-Cal member complains that the care was bad, the law intends that complaint to land on a specific dentist's desk.
Now read that against what California's regulator has actually fined these plans for.
California Dental Network, trading as DentaQuest, August 2026. Cited for failure to adequately consider an enrollee's grievance, and failure to establish and maintain a department approved grievance system. This was the company's commercial dental business rather than Medi-Cal, and the conduct dates from 2023, before it held a Medi-Cal contract.
See the ledgerDHCS auditors recorded that Health Net did not give members clear and concise explanations of the decisions in its grievance resolution letters, and that the same deficiency was uncorrected from the previous audit.
See the auditPut plainly
The grievance duties belong to the dental director. The grievance failures are what the plans keep getting fined for. Those two facts sit in the same program. All three plans have a dental director named further down this page, and for Liberty the name now comes with an end date. What the enforcement orders and the audit findings never do is name a person, because they are written about the company.
A question worth asking
The regulation requires each dental plan to appoint a dentist as dental director. Health Net of California is a licensed dental plan in this program, so it needs one.
But the provider manual that governs Health Net's dental network is DentaQuest's, and it routes clinical decisions to DentaQuest's dental director. Dentists are told to submit proposed treatment plans to DentaQuest's Dental Director or the Dental Director's designee. If a dentist wants to argue a decision, the manual tells them to request a peer to peer discussion with a DentaQuest dental director. utilization trends, quality issues from case management, and provider corrective action plans all report to the dental director in that manual.
Health Net does have a dental director, and we can name him. The next section does. That does not settle the question. It sharpens it. There are two dental directors in the picture for one member's teeth: the one the regulation requires Health Net to appoint, and the one the manual tells dentists to send their treatment plans to.
Since June 2026 there is one more thing to hold in mind. Health Net's own meeting minutes gave the title Dental Director to two different Health Net dentists in the same week, one in each county. That record is set out below.
We are not saying that is improper. Plans are allowed to hire vendors, and this manual does it in the open, on Health Net's own website. The point is narrower than that. The state regulation writes the duty for the plan, the federal rule says the plan keeps ultimate responsibility no matter who it hires, and the manual still points the treatment decisions at the vendor's dental director.
Worth remembering: grievances and appeals are the one function DentaQuest's manual says it is not delegated for. Those stay with Health Net. Which would mean the quality of care grievances that duty five assigns to a dental director go to a different company than the clinical decisions do. More on that split.
Source: Provider Office Reference Manual, California Dental Managed Care, effective 1 July 2025, published by DentaQuest and hosted on Health Net's own website.
Meet the dental directors
All three plans are named on this page, and this is the first of them. Note where the name comes from. Health Net itself told the state it hired him, and the California Department of Health Care Services published that report. His current title comes from the Center for Oral Health's advisory council listing, and the description of the job from his own biography. Every fact carries a source. The records that name him as dental director sit on the card itself. Click his name to open the full profile, where the career history and the rest of the sources live. In June 2026 Health Net's own minutes gave the same title to a second dentist. His card follows, and after it the record for both men in date order.
The Center for Oral Health lists him on its advisory council as Dental Director, Health Net. His own website describes the role without naming the company: he is Dental Director for a Managed Care Dental Plan in the State of California with oversight for one of the three Medicaid Managed Care Dental Plans in the Los Angeles and Sacramento Counties. That is the role this page has been describing, and the duties in the regulation are his.
1986
Graduates from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine with a fifth-year concentration in Health Care Administration.
1986 to 2003
Clinician and dental director across Medicaid dental programs. Works with a migrant farm population at the Laredo Webb County Health Department in Texas, at Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center in Dorchester, Massachusetts, the first federally qualified health center in the country, and oversees the Boston HealthCare for the Homeless dental program.
2000 to 2009
Owns and operates two private dental offices on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, serving Medicaid and commercial patients. Also serves as an expert advisor to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and its Board of Registration in Dentistry.
March 2006 to April 2009
Dental Medicaid Director for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, working with the Executive Office of Health and Human Services. His own account says the job involved revising the state's Medicaid dental regulations and overseeing Medicaid compliance by contracted dentists.
2009 to 2017
Academia. Associate Dean for Community Partnerships and Access to Care, facilitating accreditation of two new dental schools: Western University of Health Sciences College of Dental Medicine in Pomona, and the University of New England College of Dental Medicine in Portland, Maine. Faculty appointments have also included Harvard, Boston University Goldman School of Graduate Dentistry, and Tufts.
2012
Appointed on 23 August 2012 to the Dental Hygiene Committee of California, since renamed the Dental Hygiene Board of California, the body that issues, reviews and enforces dental hygiene licenses. Reappointed on 21 January 2014 and again on 1 January 2018. The seat pays 100 dollars per diem and does not require Senate confirmation. The board's own roster listed him as its president through 2020 and 2021, and still listed him as a member in October 2022. He was off the roster by March 2023. We have not found a record of the exact date he left, and he is not on the board today.
2012
According to Dentistry Today, he begins a relationship with the managed care organization DentaQuest in this year. See the statement below.
From 2017
Chief Dental Officer of the Borrego Community Health Foundation, a federally qualified health center in San Diego County. Dentistry Today, citing the foundation's filings, reports his total compensation for the financial year ending June 2019 as 458,134 dollars. What happened at Borrego is set out below.
30 January 2022
His position at Borrego Health ends. The date is the foundation's own. The statement of financial affairs it filed in its bankruptcy case lists him among its former officers as Dental Chair, with the period 31 August 2021 to 30 January 2022. The date Health Net gives for hiring him is 30 days later.
1 March 2022
Health Net hires him as its dental director. The date is Health Net's own, from its report to the state. The record is quoted below.
2023
Hired as a per diem dentist at DAP Health, the health center that took over Borrego Health's clinics that year, according to his resume. DAP Health's own provider page lists him in its dental department at its Sunrise Campus in Palm Springs.
Now
Dental Director, Health Net, with oversight of one of the three Medi-Cal dental managed care plans in Los Angeles and Sacramento counties. The latest record naming him in the role is a Health Net meeting agenda for 29 September 2026. In June 2026 one set of Health Net minutes gave the same title to a second dentist. See One title, two names.
“Martinez also initiated a relationship with managed care organization DentaQuest in 2012 that continues today.”
Michael W. Davis, DDS, in Dentistry Today, FBI Raids Federally Qualified Healthcare Provider Dental Clinics, 12 November 2020 (archived copy). “Continues today” refers to the date of that article. We state this as the publication's claim. Neither Dr. Timothy Martinez nor DentaQuest has published anything confirming or disputing it, and we have asked neither.
Borrego Health was the subject of a federal and state investigation while he was its chief dental officer. On 20 October 2020 investigators seized computers and medical and dental records from the foundation, and searched the offices of Premier Healthcare Management, which handled its billing. California suspended all Medi-Cal payments to the foundation in December 2020, restored them for medical care but not dental care in early 2021, and moved to suspend all of them again in August 2022. In September 2022 Borrego Health filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Dental billing was reported to be a focus of the investigation.
To be clear about what that does and does not mean. The investigation and the suspension concerned the organization. We have found no public record accusing Dr. Timothy Martinez of any wrongdoing, and none charging him with anything. He held a senior role at an organization that was investigated, raided by the FBI, had its Medi-Cal payments frozen by the State, and then filed for bankruptcy. That is a fact about his career, and it is the only claim we are making here.
The clinics have since changed hands. Borrego Health's board looked for another federally qualified health center to take them over and chose DAP Health, based in Palm Springs. The bankruptcy court approved the sale, and on 31 July 2023 the federal Health Resources and Services Administration gave the last approval it needed. DAP Health took over Borrego Health's 18 clinics, two pharmacies and six mobile clinics in Riverside and San Diego counties.
What the local paper reported at the time. The Borrego Sun covered the foundation from 2015 to 2024, and its reporting is the source for a good deal of what is known about the dental contracts. The paper replaced its website in the spring of 2025 and its back catalog went with it, so all 83 of those stories now return a Not Found. We keep readable copies of every one. Open the Borrego Sun clinic archive.
DAP Health and a federal referral. On 12 August 2026 the Secretary of Health and Human Services sent the department's Inspector General a list of hospitals and clinics “for investigation into possible violation of federal statutes,” citing what it calls potentially anomalous billing patterns in gender-related care for minors. DAP Health, Inc. is listed under claims for puberty blockers for patients aged 9 to 17, from 2015 to 2025. A referral asks for an investigation and is not a finding. The letter does not mention dental care or Borrego Health. See the recent referral to the Inspector General.
In September 2022, questioned by his own attorney in a San Diego Superior Court matter, he described his professional background. The published account of that hearing calls him Borrego Health's former chief dental officer.
I have done clinical work, but also part of my specialty is Medicaid fraud. So, I’ve worked with dental investigations both – all over the United States… Basically my background is in Medicaid fraud.
He is describing a specialty in investigating Medicaid fraud, and the publication that reported the testimony reads it the same way. We include it because the plain fact is worth knowing: the dentist responsible for one of the three Medi-Cal dental plans has testified that his background is in Medicaid fraud investigation, having worked on dental investigations across the country.
“Effective March 1, 2022, Health Net hired a new dental director, Timothy Martinez, DMD.”
Those are Health Net's own words, from its report to the state, published by the California Department of Health Care Services in its Dental Managed Care External Quality Review Technical Report for July 2021 to June 2022, page D-6. Health Net listed the hire first in its response to the state's recommendation that it fully resolve the findings of its 2021 dental audit, and wrote that Dr. Timothy Martinez was “well suited to conduct oversight” of the utilization and quality management work it had delegated to its outside administrator.
Every later record we have found, in date order.
October 2022
His own website, registered on 21 September 2022, says he is currently the Dental Director for a Managed Care Dental Plan in the State of California. It does not name the plan. The earliest archived copy is dated 24 October 2022.
October 2023
Sacramento County's Medi-Cal Dental Advisory Committee approves him as a new member, as its Dental Plan Representative for Health Net.
July 2024
The state's external reviewers list Timothy Martinez, Dental Director, among the Health Net staff they interviewed, in the report for contract year 2023-24, Volume 2, page A-2.
1 July 2025
DentaQuest begins administering Health Net's dental plan.
October 2025
The Center for Oral Health lists him as Dental Director, Health Net. The first archived copy of that listing is dated 6 October 2025.
March 2026
Health Net's own Community Advisory Committee minutes record “Dr. Timothy Martinez (Dental Director)” giving the dental update in Los Angeles on 5 March and in Sacramento on 10 March.
April 2026
Attends the Sacramento committee's meeting of 2 April 2026 and presents for one of its workgroups.
June 2026
Health Net's agendas schedule him, as Dental Director, for both of its committee meetings. The Los Angeles minutes of 25 June record him presenting with that title. The Sacramento minutes of 23 June record a different dentist with the same title and do not list him as attending. See One title, two names.
August 2026
The Sacramento committee's member list still names him as Dental Plan Representative (Health Net).
September 2026
Health Net's agendas for its meetings of 3 September in Sacramento and 29 September in Los Angeles list “Dr. Timothy Martinez, Dental Director” for the dental managed care update. An agenda is a plan for a meeting, and the minutes of those two had not been published when we checked on 13 October 2026. That is the most recent record, and we have found none saying he has left.
Sacramento County Medi-Cal Dental Advisory Committee minutes of 5 October 2023 (archived copy), minutes of 2 April 2026 and member list dated August 2026, for his seat on that committee as Health Net's plan representative. Times of San Diego, 20 March 2018 for the Dental Hygiene Committee reappointment and the Borrego appointment. For the hygiene board dates and the end of his service, the board's own Board Members and Staff page, as the Internet Archive holds it: the snapshot of 26 October 2022, which gives his appointment as 23 August 2012 and his reappointments as 21 January 2014 and 1 January 2018 and is the last snapshot to list him; the snapshot of 22 August 2021, which names him president; the snapshot of 17 February 2022, where another member holds the presidency; and the snapshot of 28 March 2023, the first that does not list him. The page as it stands today does not list him. Michael W. Davis, DDS, writing in Dentistry Today, FBI Raids Federally Qualified Healthcare Provider Dental Clinics, 12 November 2020 (archived copy), for the compensation figure, the Massachusetts dates and the DentaQuest relationship. National Provider Identifier registry for license numbers and practice location. Becker's Hospital Review for the Borrego Health timeline. Michael W. Davis, DDS, writing in Dentistry Today, FQHC Borrego Health Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection; An Analysis, 1 November 2022 (Internet Archive copy, the article having since come off the Dentistry Today site), for the court testimony and the date of the federal search. Mostly Medicaid carries the same article in full. Sacramento District Dental Society membership directory. His resume on Bold.pro for the per diem post at DAP Health from 2023, and DAP Health's provider page, published July 2025, which lists him in its dental department. Ema Sasic, The Desert Sun, Sale of Borrego Health clinics to DAP Health finalized: What patients need to know, 31 July 2023, for the sale of the clinics and its approval. Letter from the Secretary of Health and Human Services to the Inspector General, 12 August 2026, for the referral that names DAP Health. Borrego Community Health Foundation, Statement of Financial Affairs, filed 17 October 2022 in case 22-02384 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California, docket 98, page 96, for the date his position at Borrego Health ended. Health Net Community Advisory Committee papers for 2026, for the meetings at which he was scheduled or recorded as Dental Director: minutes of 5 March, 10 March, 23 June and 25 June, and agendas for 3 September and 29 September. Domain registration from the Verisign registry record for timothymartinezdmd.com. Dated page snapshots from the Internet Archive.
Center for Oral Health, staff and board, which lists him as Dental Director, Health Net. DHCS Dental Managed Care External Quality Review Technical Report, July 2021 to June 2022, page D-6, where Health Net tells the state it hired him as its dental director, with the date. DHCS Dental Managed Care External Quality Review Technical Report, contract year 2023-24, Volume 2, page A-2, which lists Timothy Martinez, Dental Director, among the Health Net staff the state's reviewers interviewed. His own biography, where he gives the role as Dental Director for a Managed Care Dental Plan in the State of California.
Health Net runs a Community Advisory Committee in each county and publishes the agendas and the minutes. The Sacramento minutes for 23 June 2026 list him among the Health Net staff who attended, and record him giving the dental update.
“Dr. Elias Koutros (Dental Director) provided updates on eligibility expansions and reductions effective July 1, 2026. Additionally, Dr. Koutros polled the committee to gather input on Sacramento County’s oral health needs assessment.”
Health Net, Sacramento County Community Advisory Committee, minutes of 23 June 2026. The agenda for the same meeting gave that half hour to “Dr. Timothy Martinez, Dental Director.”
The federal provider registry holds one record under the name Elias Koutros anywhere in the country: Elias George Koutros, DDS, a general dentist with a California license and a Rhode Island license. The practice address on that record, last updated in April 2021, is a suite at 1970 University Avenue in Riverside. Borrego Health's bankruptcy filing gives that street address for one of its own clinics, the Eastside Health Center.
Health Net has not published a biography of the dentist in its minutes. A LinkedIn profile in the same name lists Centene Corporation as his employer from 2022. Centene owns Health Net. The profile is its owner's own account, and it names Centene, not Health Net. The link between the dentist in the minutes and the dentist in the registry rests on the name, which the registry holds only once.
Two publications placed a dentist of this name in Borrego Health's dental program while Dr. Timothy S. Martinez was its chief dental officer.
30 June 2021
The Borrego Sun reports that he holds licenses in Rhode Island and two other states, that he “allegedly audited the Borrego Health dental clinics,” that he “was later hired at Borrego Health,” and that he “is no longer being paid.” It adds that the foundation's tax filings listed him as “one of the highest earning personnel that was not an officer.” We have not read those tax filings ourselves. The story calls him a medical doctor. The registry lists a dentist. Read our archived copy of the story.
1 November 2022
Dentistry Today reports that two dentists “supervised by Borrego Health dental director Martinez” were on the creditor list in Borrego Health's bankruptcy, and names one of them as “his hand-selected investigator Elias Koutros, DDS, from Rhode Island.”
We state both as the publications' claims. Neither Dr. Elias G. Koutros nor Dr. Timothy Martinez has published anything confirming or disputing them, and we have asked neither.
What the bankruptcy court's records say. Both men are on the court's list of creditors and other parties who are sent notices in the case. The certificate of notice for the order confirming Borrego Health's plan, filed on 25 January 2024, lists “Elias Koutros, Address Redacted” on page 54 and, on page 87, two entries for Timothy Martinez, one of them with D.D.S after the name. A second notice list, filed on 12 September 2024, carries the same three entries. That bears out what Dentistry Today reported. Being on that list means the court sends a person its notices. It does not say what the person is owed, or whether he is owed anything. For that we read the foundation's schedules of assets and liabilities and its statement of financial affairs, 97 pages each, both filed on 17 October 2022. The schedule of unsecured debts has 401 entries with amounts, and neither man is among them. Dr. Timothy Martinez is named once in the statement, in the list of former officers. We have not been able to read the whole register of claims that creditors filed for themselves, so we cannot say whether either man filed one.
To be clear about what this does and does not mean. The Borrego Health investigation concerned the organization. We have found no public record charging Dr. Elias Koutros with anything, and none charging Dr. Timothy Martinez. The 2021 newspaper story is sharply critical of Dr. Elias Koutros in the writer's own words. We link it for the facts it reports and we do not adopt its opinion. People who have worked together often work together again, and we are not suggesting anything improper in that. He is on this page for one reason: Health Net's minutes give him the title that California's regulation makes accountable for a dental plan's clinical decisions.
Health Net, Sacramento County Community Advisory Committee, minutes of 23 June 2026, which list him among the Health Net attendees and record him as Dr. Elias Koutros (Dental Director). Agenda for the same meeting, which scheduled Dr. Timothy Martinez, Dental Director. National Provider Identifier registry for the license numbers and the practice address. Borrego Community Health Foundation, Statement of Financial Affairs, docket 98, page 88, for the address of the Eastside Health Center. LinkedIn profile in the name Elias Koutros, for Centene Corporation as his employer from 2022. United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California, case 22-02384, certificate of notice, docket 1277, filed 25 January 2024, pages 54 and 87, and notice recipients, docket 1453, filed 12 September 2024, for the creditor notice list. Nikki Symington, Borrego Sun, New Team Leads BCHF, 30 June 2021, in our archived copy. Michael W. Davis, DDS, Dentistry Today, FQHC Borrego Health Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection; An Analysis, 1 November 2022, in the Internet Archive copy.
June 2026
Health Net's committee met twice in one week, once in each county. The agendas gave the dental half hour at both meetings to Dr. Timothy S. Martinez. The minutes record what happened.
Both meetings covered the same ground. The two sets of minutes use the same sentence for each man: he “provided updates on eligibility expansions and reductions effective July 1, 2026” and then polled the committee for the county's oral health needs assessment.
A change of presenter is not unusual by itself. At the March meetings the agendas gave the dental slot to an operations manager, and the minutes record Dr. Timothy Martinez giving it, as Dental Director, in both counties. What is new in June is the title. In every earlier Health Net record we have found, it belongs to Dr. Timothy Martinez.
The title did not stay with Dr. Elias Koutros on paper. Health Net's agendas for its next meetings, on 3 September in Sacramento and 29 September in Los Angeles, again list “Dr. Timothy Martinez, Dental Director.” The minutes of those meetings had not been published when we checked on 13 October 2026.
From 2017
Dr. Timothy Martinez is Chief Dental Officer of Borrego Health, a federally qualified health center in San Diego County.
Date not established
A dentist named Elias Koutros works in Borrego Health's dental program. The Borrego Sun reported that he allegedly audited the dental clinics and was later hired. Dentistry Today described him as Dr. Timothy Martinez's “hand-selected investigator.” Those are the publications' words, and no Borrego Health document we have read confirms the job or dates it.
20 October 2020
Federal and state investigators search Borrego Health and seize records. Dental billing is reported to be a focus.
30 June 2021
The Borrego Sun reports that Dr. Elias Koutros “is no longer being paid” by the foundation.
30 January 2022
Dr. Timothy Martinez's position at Borrego Health ends, by the foundation's own account in its bankruptcy filing.
1 March 2022
Health Net hires Dr. Timothy Martinez as its dental director, by Health Net's own account to the state.
2022
A LinkedIn profile in Dr. Elias Koutros's name gives this as the year he joined Centene Corporation, the company that owns Health Net. It does not give a Health Net title.
12 September 2022
Borrego Health files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
25 January 2024
The bankruptcy court confirms Borrego Health's plan. Its notice goes to a list of creditors and other parties that includes both men.
March 2026
Health Net's minutes in both counties record Dr. Timothy Martinez as Dental Director.
23 June 2026
Health Net's Sacramento minutes record Dr. Elias Koutros as Dental Director. This is the earliest Health Net record of him we have found.
25 June 2026
Health Net's Los Angeles minutes record Dr. Timothy Martinez as Dental Director.
September 2026
Health Net's agendas for both counties list Dr. Timothy Martinez as Dental Director.
What the record shows, and what it does not
It shows one job title on two Health Net dentists, two days apart, in Health Net's own minutes. It shows that both men are reported to have worked in Borrego Health's dental program, one under the other, and that both are on the creditor notice list in its bankruptcy. It shows both of them moving to Health Net or its parent company in 2022, after the search of October 2020: Dr. Timothy Martinez on 1 March by Health Net's account, Dr. Elias Koutros that year by a LinkedIn profile in his name. It does not show that Dr. Elias Koutros has replaced Dr. Timothy Martinez, because the Los Angeles minutes two days later and the September agendas name Dr. Timothy Martinez. And it does not show which of them, if either, is the appointment Health Net has filed with the state.
We have not put these questions to Health Net. If you know the answer to any of them, tell us.
Common questions
Short answers, each taken from the records set out above.
The dentist Health Net has named for longest is Timothy S. Martinez, DMD. Health Net told the state it hired him as its dental director with effect from 1 March 2022, and its own meeting papers still give him that title in September 2026. In June 2026 its Sacramento minutes gave the same title to a second dentist, Dr. Elias G. Koutros. Which of them Health Net reports to the state as its dental director of record is not published.
Health Net's Sacramento Community Advisory Committee minutes for 23 June 2026 list him among Health Net staff and record him as Dr. Elias Koutros (Dental Director). The federal provider registry holds one record under that name, a general dentist licensed in California and Rhode Island. Two publications reported in 2021 and 2022 that a dentist of that name worked in Borrego Health's dental program under Dr. Timothy S. Martinez. A LinkedIn profile in his name lists Centene Corporation, the company that owns Health Net, as his employer from 2022. Health Net has not published a biography of him. His card has the sources.
The records do not show that. On 25 June 2026, two days after the Sacramento meeting, Health Net's Los Angeles minutes recorded Dr. Timothy Martinez as Dental Director, and its September 2026 agendas list him with that title in both counties. What the records show is one title given to two dentists in the same week. We have found no explanation from Health Net.
Published reports say so. Dr. Timothy Martinez was Borrego Health's chief dental officer from 2017, and the foundation's bankruptcy filing lists him as a former officer whose position ended on 30 January 2022. The Borrego Sun reported in June 2021 that Dr. Elias Koutros allegedly audited the foundation's dental clinics and was later hired there. Dentistry Today reported in November 2022 that he was supervised by Dr. Timothy Martinez, and called him Dr. Timothy Martinez's hand-selected investigator. Both men are on the creditor notice list in Borrego Health's bankruptcy. Neither is in the foundation's own schedule of unsecured debts.
Investigators searched Borrego Health on 20 October 2020. Borrego Health's bankruptcy filing dates the end of Dr. Timothy Martinez's position to 30 January 2022, and Health Net dates his hire to 1 March 2022. For Dr. Elias Koutros, a LinkedIn profile in his name lists Centene Corporation, the company that owns Health Net, from 2022. Health Net has published no hire date for him, and the earliest Health Net record of him we have found is the minutes of 23 June 2026.
The Borrego Health investigation concerned the organization. We have found no public record charging Dr. Timothy Martinez or Dr. Elias Koutros with anything. A 2021 newspaper story is critical of Dr. Elias Koutros in the writer's own words, which we do not adopt. Both men are on this page because of the job title, which is the one California's regulation makes accountable for a dental plan's clinical decisions.
The regulation says each dental plan shall appoint a dentist as dental director. The state's published contract template requires a full time dentist in the role, and written notice to the state within ten calendar days of any change. Companies of this size often have several people with dental director in their job title. The appointment the regulation describes is one named dentist, reported to the state, and that record is not published. More on that gap.
Meet the dental directors
This one we have from the plan's own meeting minutes, in both counties, a week apart.
California Dental Network (DentaQuest) runs a Community Advisory Committee in each county. Its published minutes list the presenters by name and title, and in both counties he is Dr. Santosh Sundaresan, Dental Director. In Los Angeles the minutes go further and record him saying it himself.
“Santosh Sundaresan introduced himself as the California Dental Director, highlighting his experience with community programs and university affiliations.”
Los Angeles County Community Advisory Committee meeting, minutes of 19 March 2026. He is listed as Dental Director in the agenda of the Sacramento meeting of 12 March 2026 as well.
They are substantial, and they are the opposite of a corporate career. His public record at USC is one of community dentistry.
2005
Graduates from the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC.
Faculty
Assistant professor of clinical dentistry at Ostrow, and Section Chair for Community Health Programs, the part of the school that runs care for people who are not walking into a private practice.
2015
Receives the Dr. Arthur A. Dugoni Faculty Award.
Mobile clinics
Directs USC's mobile dental clinic program, including the launch of what the university called its biggest ever mobile dental clinic, and leads a week of treating Special Olympics athletes.
March 2026
Presents clinical updates to the Sacramento advisory committee and the member benefit spotlight in Los Angeles, as California Dental Director.
Dr. Katrina Eagilen, Chief Oral Health Access Officer, chaired both meetings and presented the population needs assessments. Anne Peres is the committee coordinator. Both are listed as DentaQuest.
National Provider Identifier registry for the license number and location. USC Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry for the Dugoni award and faculty role, USC for the mobile clinic program, and USC for the Special Olympics week.
Los Angeles CAC minutes, 19 March 2026, where he introduces himself as the California Dental Director, and Sacramento CAC minutes, 12 March 2026, which list him as Dental Director. Both are published by DentaQuest.
So the honest statement is this. On the company's own published evidence, Dr. Santosh Sundaresan is the California Dental Director of California Dental Network (DentaQuest). Whether that is the same appointment the contract requires the plan to report to the state, we cannot yet show, because that record is not public. If you can close that gap, tell us.
Meet the dental directors
This one took the longest, and the answer now comes with an end date on it.
Liberty runs a Community Advisory Committee for its Medi-Cal members in California, and it publishes the minutes. Each set opens with a roll call listing every member of staff who attended, by name and job title. Liberty tags its dental directors by scope in that list, some with CA and one with NAT, which makes this the clearest labeling of the three plans.
“Dr. Angel Sanchez-Figueras, Dental Director, CA”
Liberty Dental Plan, Medi-Cal Dental Community Advisory Committee minutes, fourth quarter 2025, for the meeting held 26 February 2026. The same roll call lists Dr. Charles Moser as Dental Director, NAT. An asterisk beside a name means that person has voting rights, and his carries one.
He did not only attend. He chaired. The last page of those minutes is an acknowledgment of committee approval, and it is signed Angel Sanchez-Figueras, DDS, Committee Chair, dated 23 March 2026. By then he had already said in public that the job was ending. Six days earlier he had posted this on his professional profile.
“I am sharing news of a career shift that will be effective May 4th, 2026. Due to internal restructuring strategies, my position as California Dental Director for Liberty Dental Plan has been eliminated. As a result, I am once again in search of further challenges.”
Angel Sanchez-Figueras, DDS, public post on LinkedIn. LinkedIn shows the post only as about six months old in September 2026. The number in its web address places it on 17 March 2026.
Before 2022
A long clinical career, then consulting. Liberty's own newsletter says he had already been a dental director for a managed care plan in California before he arrived.
September 2022
Announces publicly that he has left his role at Guardian and joined Liberty.
Winter 2022
Liberty introduces him to its dentists in its provider newsletter, under the title Dental Director QI, Clinical Affairs CA.
February 2026
Listed in the California advisory committee roll call as Dental Director, CA, with voting rights, and signs the minutes as committee chair the following month.
17 March 2026
Announces that his position as California Dental Director has been eliminated, effective 4 May 2026, and attributes it to internal restructuring strategies.
4 May 2026
Last day in the role, by his own account. It is also the effective date of a notice Liberty Dental Plan Corporation filed with the State on 5 March 2026 covering 16 jobs at its Tustin office, set out below.
28 May 2026
Off the roll call at the next committee meeting. No dental director on that roll call carries the CA tag.
Liberty Provider News, Winter 2022 for the earlier managed care role. National Provider Identifier registry for the license number and location. His own post of 17 March 2026 for the elimination of the position and its effective date. California Employment Development Department, WARN report for 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026 for the notice Liberty filed with the same effective date.
Liberty Dental Plan, California advisory committee minutes, fourth quarter 2025, whose roll call reads Dr. Angel Sanchez-Figueras, Dental Director, CA, with voting rights, and whose approval page he signs as chair. Published on the plan's own committee page. Liberty Provider News, Winter 2022, which introduces him to the plan's dentists as Dental Director QI, Clinical Affairs CA. Liberty Dental Plan Quarterly, Spring 2026, which lists him among the company's Medicaid dental directors and is the source for the table further down this page. That issue was produced in March 2026, by its own file data, and the Internet Archive holds a copy from 15 April 2026, so it predates the end of his job.
Then the job was eliminated
In the very next set of minutes, for the meeting held 28 May 2026, his name is off the roll call altogether. So is Dr. Charles Moser's. Three dental directors are listed instead, Dr. Afshin Arian, Dr. Leta Langford and Dr. Tamara Kay-Tibby, and none of them is tagged CA. We first read that as a missed meeting, because Liberty's Spring 2026 provider newsletter still listed him. That reading was wrong. His own announcement, quoted in the profile above, says the position was eliminated with effect from 4 May 2026, and the newsletter was produced in March, before that date. The 28 May roll call is the first Liberty document after the job ended, and no dental director on it carries the CA tag.
What Liberty filed with the State that spring
He gave the reason as internal restructuring strategies. The State's layoff register has two Liberty notices from the same months. Employers file advance notices of layoffs under California's WARN Act with the Employment Development Department, which publishes a running report of them. It records a notice from Liberty Dental Plan of California, Inc. dated 5 February 2026, for 22 employees at 1730 Flight Way, Tustin, effective 6 April 2026, marked Layoff, Permanent. It then records a notice from Liberty Dental Plan Corporation dated 5 March 2026, for 16 employees at the same address, effective 4 May 2026, marked Layoff, Permanent. That is the date he gave. The report lists counts and addresses, not names or job titles, so it does not show whether his position was among the 16. Liberty also filed a notice in Florida on 5 February, with the same 6 April date. Becker's Dental Review reported that Florida notice as 95 layoffs, 63 of them member service representatives, and said the company had decided to contract out operations. Those are the Florida notice's figures, not California's, and the report does not say how many of the 95 worked in California.
California Employment Development Department, WARN report, 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2026, entries dated 5 February 2026 and 5 March 2026 under Orange County. Becker's Dental Review, Liberty Dental Plans to lay off 95 employees, 6 February 2026, reporting the notice filed with the Florida Department of Commerce.
Update and correction, 28 September 2026
What changed in this section, and why. We found Dr. Angel Sanchez-Figueras's own announcement of 17 March 2026 that his position as California Dental Director had been eliminated with effect from 4 May 2026. Until today this section said his absence from the 28 May 2026 roll call was not a sign he had gone, because the Spring 2026 newsletter still listed him. That was wrong, and the sentence is gone. We added his announcement to his profile, an end date to his title, the two layoff notices Liberty filed with the State that spring, and a line in the table below. We then searched for a successor and found no Liberty or State document naming one. The box at the end of this section lists where we looked. The search is still open.
A fair question, and Liberty answers it itself. Its provider newsletter carries a leadership page listing the company's Medicaid dental directors state by state. Every one of them has a state in brackets after the title. Exactly one does not.
| Dentist | How Liberty lists the role | Where we can place a license |
|---|---|---|
| Angel Sanchez-Figueras | Medicaid Dental Director, Western Team. The only name on the page with no state after it. Position eliminated 4 May 2026, by his own account. | California, 031696 |
| Afshin Arian | Medicaid Dental Director (NV) | Nevada, 3321 |
| Leta Langford | Medicaid Dental Director (OK) | Oklahoma, 6460, and New Mexico, DD3238 |
| Tamara Kay-Tibby | Medicaid Dental Director (FL) | Florida, DN15880, filed as Tamara-Kay Tibby, DMD |
| Charles Moser | National Dental Director, Clinical Services, which is what the NAT tag on the roll call stands for | We could not establish which listing is his |
Roles from Liberty Dental Plan Quarterly, Spring 2026. Dr. Afshin Arian's Nevada role is confirmed independently by the Nevada Division of Public and Behavioral Health, whose oral health advisory committee minutes of 22 April 2022 record him as Nevada Dental Director, Liberty Dental Plan. Licenses from the National Provider Identifier registry.
Why the state tags matter
The DHCS contract is specific about this. The Dental Director must maintain a current dental license with the State of California at all times, in good standing at the time of hire and for the whole of their employment. Of the dentists on those two California committee roll calls, the only one we can place on a California license is Dr. Angel Sanchez-Figueras, and his position ended on 4 May 2026. Dr. Afshin Arian is Nevada's, Dr. Leta Langford is Oklahoma's, Dr. Tamara Kay-Tibby is Florida's, and Dr. Charles Moser's job is a national one.
We are not reading the state tags into the roster. In 2026 Liberty advertised for a Senior Director, Dental for its Medicaid business, and the advert sets the arrangement out plainly. The job is the clinical leader for that line of business, covering utilization management, clinical policy, regulatory compliance and escalated appeals, and the person in it is there to lead, mentor, and support State Dental Directors. A tier of state dental directors is how the company is built.
One detail in that advert is worth putting beside the contract. It asks for an active, unrestricted dental license in at least one U.S. state. For the national job, any one state will do. For the dental director of a Medi-Cal dental plan in California, the contract says it has to be California.
What that committee was told. At the May 2026 meeting the plan reported its own complaint trends to the committee. The leading grievance categories were access and availability and quality of care. The leading appeal categories were crowns and bridges, and root canals. The minutes record that these continue to be the leading categories. Duty five and duty six, further up this page, are the grievance duties, and they belong to a dental director.
The bit we cannot finish yet
All three plans have a name on this page, and one of those names now comes with an end date. That is not the same as having the answer.
Here is the problem. Companies of this size have several people with dental director in their title: national directors, regional directors, directors for a particular line of business, chief dental officers. Those are corporate job titles. The role in the regulation is different. It is a specific appointment, made by a specific licensed plan, reported to the state, and changed only with notice to the state within ten days. Health Net's own minutes from June 2026 show how far apart the two can be: the same title, on two dentists, two days apart. That record is above.
Everything on this page is the best public evidence we have found for each plan. For Health Net, that includes the plan's own report to the state, published by DHCS, which dates his hire to 1 March 2022. For DentaQuest, committee minutes. For Liberty, committee minutes and a provider newsletter, plus the director's own announcement that his position ended on 4 May 2026. The DentaQuest and Liberty titles are corporate ones, published by the companies.
None of them is the appointment filing itself. That record exists, because the plans have to file it, and it is not published. The Health Net date is the closest we have come, because it is the plan's own account of the hire in a document the state published. So we are telling you exactly what our sources say and exactly what they do not, rather than dressing a job title up as a statutory appointment.
Nobody answers? Bartle will.
Show your work
Denial notices and grievance responses are often signed by a dental director. If you have one, you may be holding the answer to this page.
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