In Part 1 of this conversation, Eva Allan dismantled the idea that medical-dental integration (MDI) has failed due to a lack of awareness or professional will. The barriers, she argues, are structural and economic.
In Part 2, we explore where integration is most likely to break through and which tools, technologies, and forces may finally move it from theory to practice.
Michael Ventriello.
Michael Ventriello: Why hasn't belief in MDI translated into action?
Eva Allan: Because belief doesn't pay for time, liability, staffing, or infrastructure.
Dentists and physicians already understand the oral-systemic connection. Many want to collaborate.
But as long as coordination represents an uncompensated cost, including more documentation, more risk, and more complexity, it won't scale.
Goodwill collapses under friction. Economics wins every time.
Dentistry struggles with interoperability internally. How can it ever connect with medicine?
Interoperability is not primarily a technical problem. It's an alignment problem.
Dentistry doesn't need perfect standards. It needs translators: people who understand dental workflows, payer dynamics, and clinician behavior well enough to map meaningful signals into medical systems today.
Medical records didn't become interoperable because they were elegant. They became interoperable because the cost of fragmentation became too high. Dentistry is approaching that same inflection point.
Will medical-dental integration move faster in public health programs like Medicaid?
Yes, and history explains why.
When regulation is the barrier, government programs move fastest. Medicaid has long been the proving ground for new care models, because it can realign benefits and scope of practice at scale.
Medicaid populations carry a disproportionate burden of oral disease and chronic illness, making the clinical and economic case for integration immediately visible. When rules change, they apply across millions of lives, generating real-world data quickly.
Private plans should pay attention but not wait. Government programs de-risk experimentation. The mistake commercial plans make is waiting for perfect certainty. By the time the model feels safe, the advantage is gone.
Can virtual care effectively connect dentistry and medicine?
Eva Allan.
Yes, but only if it's treated as a doorway, not a destination.
Dental offices should have telemedical access points. Medical offices should have teledental ones. These don't need to be complex; they need to be visible and trusted.
But access alone isn't enough. Virtual care must be paired with referral concierge workflows that ensure patients actually reach the next chair they need. Without that handoff, telehealth becomes a dead end. With it, virtual care becomes connective tissue.
Where does AI genuinely add value?
AI's value is not replacing clinical judgment. It's reducing friction.
It can synthesize dental and medical signals to surface actionable risk, translate records across disciplines, and trigger referrals at the point of care. That gives clinicians justification -- clinically and economically -- to act across traditional boundaries.
What are the AI risks?
The mistake would be letting AI dictate care. The opportunity is letting it support coordination, reduce waste, and prevent patients from falling through the cracks.
Integration hasn't failed because clinicians lack insight. It fails because systems don't talk and time is scarce. AI, used correctly, closes those gaps.
How can dentists and hygienists build stronger relationships with physicians and nurses?
This isn't a relationship problem. It's an incentive problem.
As long as collaboration represents unpaid labor -- more time, more documentation, more liability -- it will remain episodic. Fix the economics and modernize the rules, and collaboration becomes the default mode of care.
What will accelerate MDI the fastest?
Pharmaceutical innovation. Most oral disease is biological before it is procedural. Periodontal disease, caries, mucosal inflammation, dysbiosis -- these are chemistry problems masquerading as mechanical ones.
Pharma scales faster than workflow reform. It does not wait for perfect integration, scope-of-practice reform, or cultural alignment. Once a molecule that treats oral disease precisely with minimal side effects works therapeutically, it can move through regulated channels that already exist.
How would that movement occur?
It can be prescribed by multiple provider types, reimbursed under medical benefit structures, and scaled nationally with consistency. When inflammation can be chemically modulated, oral health medicine will start to resemble every other chronic disease medicine.
Treatment compliance will shift from "floss better" to "take this." This will enable us to leapfrog the current care reform obstacles. At that point, integration won't need to be forced. It will become inevitable.
Eva Allan is a healthcare strategist and operations leader with experience spanning clinical redesign, virtual care programs, insurance, workforce planning, and multisite healthcare operations. She has held leadership roles across both startup environments and established healthcare organizations, where she has worked at the intersection of care delivery, technology, innovation, and system performance. She writes about the architecture of the healthcare system, its persistent misaligned incentives, and the urgent need for models that improve quality, access, and sustainability. Connect with Allan on LinkedIn.
Michael Ventriello is widely regarded as the "Dental Product Launch Expert" and is the owner and founder of Ventriello Communications and the co-founder and chief communications officer of the Personify Group. Ventriello is an award-winning copywriter, a former journalist, broadcaster, and frequently published author and dental industry pundit. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
The comments and observations expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the opinions of DrBicuspid.com, nor should they be construed as an endorsement or admonishment of any particular idea, vendor, or organization.
