Kandra Sellers, RDH, has spent more than 35 years in dentistry, more recently helping practices implement medical billing so patients can access benefits that fall outside a standard dental fee schedule. But this episode of The DrBicuspid.com Podcast starts with a subject Sellers wasn't expecting -- passion and how much of it dentistry has lost.
Host Kevin Henry talks with Sellers about a recent development that's had her energized. At this year's American Academy of Oral Systemic Health scientific session, an organization she's been involved with since its founding, the ADA's current president, Dr. Richard Rosato, attended for the first time in the organization's history. As an oral surgeon who works closely with medical billing himself, Rosato expressed interest in exploring a formal ADA initiative around medical-dental integration and asked Sellers to follow up directly. She had a call scheduled with the ADA within days of the conversation.
That development anchors a broader discussion about why oral health has remained siloed from overall health for more than a century, despite the connection being documented as far back as 1910. Sellers argues that practices caught on the "hamster wheel" of production and reimbursement, especially given dentistry's unusually high overhead compared to other medical specialties, have often let dollars, rather than patients, drive decision-making. She connects that dynamic directly to burnout and attrition in the profession.
Sellers makes the case that medical billing isn't just a revenue strategy, it's a way that patients gain access to procedures that are listed on a dental fee schedule but aren't actually reimbursable through dental insurance, things like bone grafting, computed tomography scans, biopsies, and frenectomies that often are quietly written off instead of billed appropriately.
She also shares an example from a conversation with Henry Schein about an inexpensive A1C testing device practices could use to flag patients whose uncontrolled blood sugar jeopardizes their periodontal health -- one more entry point into the medical side of care.
Throughout the conversation, Sellers returns to a central theme: rebuilding the patient-centered purpose that brought many people into dentistry in the first place and letting reimbursement follow that purpose rather than replace it.
Kandra Sellers can be reached through her website, TIPSmedicalbilling.com.
Listen to the full conversation below.
