by Jeff Burton, Founder/CEO, Lyon Dental Sleep Services
The dental sleep industry has certainly made great strides in recent years. More dentists are pursuing education and more patients are expressing interest. Through my company, Lyon Dental, I’ve been fortunate enough to interact with hundreds of passionate dentists who are focused on implementing dental sleep. As much as I am enthusiastic about the potential of our field, I am equally concerned about the barriers that still exist.
I am surprised at how many practices continue to struggle with practice management fundamentals including workflow, documentation and billing. In addition, most dental practices don’t fully embrace the shift to medical when they approach these functions. What does this mean? Well, your workflow for dental sleep is unlike anything you do in your general dental practice because you are treating a medical condition. There is a heavy burden to produce internal and external supporting documentation so that you can comply with complex medical policies. Billing for oral appliance therapy is perhaps the most difficult piece of the puzzle and without the right resources and process in place, there is little chance at seeing any reimbursement from medical insurance.
So what if there was a better solution focused on overcoming these barriers? I’ve spent the better part of the last 5 years trying to figure it out. As a registered nurse with experience working for a major health plan and a large physician group, I approached this problem from a different perspective. We must think about ALL of the key external stakeholders here – referring physicians, insurance companies, and patients. How could we develop a system that would meet their demands AND make it easy for a dental practice to manage cases?
The answer was a comprehensive practice management platform that pushed the boundaries of dental sleep medicine. MD FusionTM is a next-generation, cloud-based software that we believe will be a game changer for the industry. It brings the technical elements of dental sleep together with the fundamentals of practice management for an end-to-end solution that breeds efficiency. It was designed with an intuitive workflow to guide practices without the need for extensive training. The strongest feature are the built-in templates that will ensure higher compliance with the documentation requirements from payers and communication demands of physicians. Top it off with the most robust medical billing module available to dentists with fully integrated billing services and you’ve got a system that truly supports the missing requirements our field has desperately needed.
Our mission is to help dentists see the value in embracing a slightly different model that is further aligned with a medical approach in order to better meet the needs of our stakeholders.
For more ideas about the practice management fundamentals of dental sleep management software, read an article by Brandie Havell’s article “Why Should You Consider DSM Software?” here.
