A Business Case for Oral Physicians: Market Analysis and Potential Practice Models for Dentists to Address the United States Primary Care Shortage

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Sina Hedayatnia, BA and Donald B. Giddon, DMD, PhD

Dentists are in a prime position to address the US primary care shortage by expanding their scope of practice towards screening for systemic health conditions. Primary care activity by dentists alone has the potential to save $15 billion in avoided medical expenses through concierge models and/or ACO-partnered dental practices.

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Sina Hedayatnia, BA^1,2 and Donald B. Giddon, DMD, PhD³                                              

¹Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Boston, MA 02115, USA

²Harvard Business School, Boston, MA 02163, USA

³Department of Developmental Biology, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Boston, MA, 02115, USA

Correspondence should be addressed to S.H. (Sina_Hedayatnia@hsdm.harvard.edu)

Dentists are in a prime position to address the US primary care shortage by expanding their scope of practice towards screening for systemic health conditions. Primary care activity by dentists alone has the potential to save $15 billion in avoided medical expenses through concierge models and/or ACO-partnered dental practices.

This concierge practice model is advantageous for patients desiring a premium level of dental care with the added benefit of general health screening. This type of practice may, however, exclude patients from lower socioeconomic backgrounds depending on the fee structure of the practice. Transitioning an existing dental practice into this oral physician model may also be difficult if patients must be dropped from the practice to decrease the size of the patient pool. Nonetheless, the concierge care model represents an innovative and attractive business offering for newly minted dentists to address the primary care conundrum of our generation.

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The second model we developed can be best described as a “partner-practice” contracted with an Accountable Care Organization and is presented in Figure 5.

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SOURCE: http://www.hmsreview.org/?article=a-business-case-for-oral-physicians-market-analysis-and-potential-practice-models-for-dentists-to-address-the-united-states-primary-care-shortage

Sina Hedayatnia, BA^1,2 and Donald B. Giddon, DMD, PhD³                                              

¹Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Boston, MA 02115, USA

²Harvard Business School, Boston, MA 02163, USA

³Department of Developmental Biology, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Boston, MA, 02115, USA