Dr. Steve Lamberg says Pediatric and Adult Airway Network of New York (PAANNY) is helping to overcome the problems of initiating dental sleep medicine in any practice. Read about attending the 9th annual PAANNY conference on May 1 and May 2, and even find out about getting this type of organization going in your area.
by Steve Lamberg, DDS
”Beyond frustrated” is a common refrain from dentists beginning their journey into sleep medicine. The importance of building dental sleep medicine into their practices appears yoked to a host of insurmountable obstacles that include: where to get quality education, how to train the staff, how to market the addition of wellness to existing and new patients, how to manage medical insurance and billing, and how to get accepted into the medical community in your area to achieve a necessary team of specialists. Many become discouraged quickly and abandon this path forward to provide these most important services. Creating solutions to the many obstacles led to the creation of the Pediatric and Adult Airway Network of New York, affectionately known as PAANNY.
What is PAANNY and how does it respond to the problems at hand? First and foremost, it is an educational forum and recognizes that we cannot advance our patient care without sharing information across the many silos of healthcare. Bringing together speakers from every field of medicine and dentistry and allied health fields that relate to airway and sleep issues provides a solid foundation for building teams of like-minded individuals. We all share the recognition that networking leads to optimal patient care – an idea proven to be sustainable. This May will mark our 9th annual event in New York. We quickly realized that networking should be geographically oriented. There’s no point in connecting with specialists in faraway states you cannot share patient care with. The best way to overcome the initiating problems of dental sleep medicine in any practice is to have a PAAN(NY) in your practical referring distance area.
This year the title of the program is Unreasonable Dip and Bounce. This headline draws from three popular books. The first being Unreasonable Hospitality, written by Will Guidara of Eleven Madison Park fame, and expresses the pressing energy to give people more than they expect. The Dip is from Seth Godin’s book by the same name and refers to overcoming the normal setbacks to achieve your goals. Finally Bounce, by Mathew Syed, refers to finding confidence and provoking the positive to become a champion at anything. These three words embody the qualities of our membership.
Perhaps getting this type of organization going in your area seems daunting. A Brazilian friend taught me long ago that you can either “Learn through your head or learn through your feet”. We learned through our feet, and it was lots of hard work to figure out how to keep everyone satisfied with the annual symposium. There’s no need for you to employ the trial and error we went through, as you can learn through your head. We can help you get started with a proven formula that will bring everyone together. Consider joining us on May 1 and May 2 to see what we have created and copy and paste our recipe in your neighborhood. It’s hard to imagine dental sleep medicine success without a group like PAANNY in your area. It literally checks all the boxes to help you overcome the most common obstacles.
As the politics of medicine and insurance companies have created a Dip to overcome, now is our time to Bounce. Going beyond patients’ expectations creates good energy and everyone benefits. For more information on the program this Spring, please visit PAANNY.org.
Dr. Lamberg, director of the Pediatric and Adult Airway Network of New York (PAANNY), addresses early intervention and prevention by both physicians and dentists for optimal health in his article, Dentistry 3.0 at https://dentalsleeppractice.com/dentistry-3-0/.
Dr. Steve Lamberg has been practicing comprehensive restorative dentistry in Northport, NY for 40 years. Always passionate about sleep and wellness, he became a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Sleep Medicine in 2011 and has served on their board review faculty. He holds several patents, and is the inventor of the Lamberg SleepWell Appliance, which is FDA-cleared for the treatment of OSA. Dr. Lamberg also launched and serves as the director of the Pediatric and Adult Airway Network of New York (PAANNY), to provide a local platform where dentists, physicians, orofacial myologists, and other related professionals learn and collaborate on treatment patients of all ages. Additionally, Dr. Lamberg serves as a Scientific Advisor at the Kois Center in Seattle and teaches a course there titled Restorative Dentistry for the Airway Compromised Patient. His recently published book for the general public, “Treat the Cause…Treat the Airway” correlates many common medical conditions to airway and sleep and is available on Amazon.