Physician-Dentist Teamwork Essential for Optimal Patient Care

Physician-Dentist Teamwork Essential for Optimal Patient Care

Physician-dentist collaboration provides benefits for both patients and providers and promotes value-based care and reimbursement.

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A medical billing company knows the importance of billing medically necessary dental services to medical plans. Billing patients' medical benefits plan will ease the financial burden on patients and safeguard their annual dental insurance benefits.

By ensuring the right diagnosis and procedures codes, companies providing efficient dental billing services help providers maximize reimbursement and minimize denials. Today, with many studies suggesting a link between physical and oral health, it has become evident that physician-dentist teamwork is necessary to promote optimal patient care.

A recent article in Medical Economics discusses the advantages of physician-dentist collaboration for both patients and providers:  A comprehensive study by UnitedHealthcare found that when the oral health of individuals with chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes, asthma and cardiovascular disease was improved, it reduced their annual healthcare claims by nearly $1,300.  Improve the care of diabetics and asthmatics would not be possible until their dental problems are addressed. It shows why dentists and physicians should be aware of the importance of the dental-oral health link.  If trained, dentists can play an important role in some functions in primary care such as managing blood pressure. Such skills would be very useful given the current shortage of primary care physicians. Moreover, dentists that have these basic skills could help people who visit them but don’t see their primary care physician.  Physician-dentist

collaboration

will

promote

value-based

care

and

reimbursement.

Research has also shown that dental sleep medicine practitioners who collaborate with sleep physicians will be better-positioned to provide the highest quality of care for patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).

However, there are several challenges involved in ensuring effective collaboration between dentists and medical practitioners. One is the issue of professional

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territoriality. Identifying a reasonable scope of practice is important to building and promoting collaboration between dentists and physicians.

Education is another important aspect. For instance, the Medical Economics report mentions a pediatric practice in Pennsylvania that has two dental hygienists on site for 20 hours per week. The dental professionals educate parents on oral health while their children are in the exam room.

To make this model succeed, experts recommend that physicians consider dentists as a specialist for consultations and referrals. Primary care clinicians should also educate themselves on oral health issues and practices. For example, physicians can enroll in a nationally recognized online program like Smile for Life which is aimed at enhancing the role of primary care physicians in improving the oral health for people of all ages. Experts also recommend that, in addition to discussing matters with their dentists, physicians could talk to their health insurance company about strategies to improve their dental HEDIS scores. HEDIS coding captures data for performance measures and promotes efficient medical billing for improvement in claims reimbursement.

www.outsourcestrategies.com

Phone: 1-800-670-2809