The Missing Link in Healthcare is in Your Mouth
Nexus Dental Systems is a one-stop-shop that can help dental practices grow with ease, treat more patients more effectively, and safely.
Video Description
I was a junior in college when I interacted with a clinician from the University of Pennsylvania who strangely at that time navigated the world between medicine and dentistry. That moment changed me. It led me down a career path in oral medicine, a field that lives at the intersection of dentistry and medicine, but far too often feels like no man’s land. And it planted the question that has shaped my career ever since.
Why are we still treating the mouth as separate from the body?
In today’s healthcare system, we’ve divided the patient into silos. Doctors treat the body. Dentists treat the mouth. Optometrists treat the eyes. Podiatrists treat the feet. Pharmacists manage medications. But the science doesn’t support that split.
We know the mouth is a gateway to the rest of the body and a barometer of overall well-being. We know periodontal disease is linked to diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, adverse pregnancy outcomes, Alzheimer’s, even COVID. We know that patients who see a dentist regularly cost the health care system less over time.
And yet 60% of Americans with medical insurance don’t have dental coverage. And even when they do, medical conditions that present in the oral and maxyl facial region like obstructive sleep apnea go unaddressed because we’ve created a billing firewall between two professions that should be collaborating. This isn’t just bad care. It’s bad economics and it’s inefficiency at scale. And it’s leaving the most vulnerable patients behind.
Imagine a world where dentists could bill medical insurance when treating medically necessary conditions. What if an oral cancer screening, a biopsy, a sleep apnea device, or salivary diagnostic tests could be reimbursed like any other medical service. That’s the world we’re building at Nexus Dental Systems. And the engine behind it is Nexus Bill.
Nexus Bill is not just a billing tool. It’s a bridge, a fully integrated platform from the ground up to allow dental providers to submit medical claims accurately, compliantly, and profitably. We’re talking about automated medical necessity documentation, AI enhanced pre-authorization workflows, real time eligibility checks, medical claim optimization, and expert human coders when it matters. And more importantly, it’s education backed.
We don’t just give dentists the tools. We give them the education, training, and support that they need to use them with confidence. Because the future of healthcare won’t be about more technology. It will be about more intelligent connection between systems, providers, and patients.
At Nexus, we see a world where dental offices become early detection hubs for chronic disease. Oral health data informs systemic care and reimbursement aligns with prevention, not just procedures. And that’s not just wishful thinking. It’s already happening because we’re already working with practices, DSOs, and payers across the country who see the writing on the wall.
I’ve spent my career in dental education, academic leadership, the practice of oral medicine, and a focus on healthcare strategy. I have seen the brilliance of our clinicians and the brokenness of our systems. But I believe we’re at a tipping point. The mouth is not separate from the body, and billing should not separate care from access.
We can no longer afford to treat the mouth as a medical afterthought. It’s time to integrate. It’s time to innovate. It’s time to transform healthcare from the inside out. Because when we connect what’s been divided, when we align the incentives with evidence, when we tear down the silos between medicine and dentistry, we don’t just change billing, we change healthcare, and we change lives.
The future is Nexus, and that future is now. Thank you.
In 2017 the ADA tasked every dentist with screening for Obstructive Sleep Apnea and providing treatment when prescribed by a physician. We are here to help you deliver on that mission.
Dental Sleep Medicine is a therapeutic field that uses custom made oral appliances to treat OSA and sleep related breathing disorders. Oral appliances adjust the position of the mandible forward, which can reduce or eliminate airway obstruction. Dental sleep medicine provides the alternative to surgical intervention and CPAP.
Unfortunately, lack of training, disjointed electronic medical record systems, and fractured insurance payer systems have compounded the ability of patients to access affordable, life-saving intervention without frustration and delay, which prevents dentists from providing efficacious treatment.
Because OSA is a medical condition that is treated by a dentist, a group of interdisciplinary providers must work in conjunction with one another.
Nexus Dental Systems's
4-Tenet Ecosystem
Nexus Dental Systems was created to unite several key solutions for medically necessary dental treatments into one fully integrated system. These solutions include credentialing (ACSDD), whole team training (N3Sleep), patient outreach and education (DreamSleep, DentalPlay), and an innovative medical billing solution that is integrated into the whole process through our proprietary software.
We united these capabilities to address the main challenges dentists face when
treating sleep.
There are many options out there for education in Dental Sleep Medicine. From weekend courses, online courses, seminars, webinars, multi-week programs and min-residencies, there are a lot of options for Dental Sleep Medicine education. For most of these programs, passing is determined by the completion of a required number of hours and a score on an exam. With one exception, none require that a board review a dentist’s cases. Dentists are becoming “Diplomates” without ever having treated a case and this is harming the entire field of dental sleep medicine.
Physicians go through intensive training, and even after they have graduated, they must complete a residency, where their cases are all reviewed by a senior physician with years of experience, because results in the real world are different from results on an exam. Physicians want to refer to someone they trust with the life and care of their patient. A practitioner who will provide medically appropriate treatment, verified with efficacy testing, who has a proven record of successfully treating OSA with oral appliance therapy. Therefore, board certification without case review is harming the reputation of Dental Sleep Medicine.
We believe in this so much that we found the only group that requires case review in DSM and The Academy of Clinical Sleep Disorder Disciplines. The ACSDD is a not-for-profit organization that offers a rigorous 13 CE online course program, which qualifies a dentist to submit cases for board review. A multidisciplinary board reviews twenty cases, including five in detailed narrative forms to evaluate the appropriateness, quality, and efficacy of treatment.
It’s the elephant in the room. It is the number one reason dentists give up. Even in the best-case scenario, it takes forever to get paid and is wildly inconsistent. Insurance companies are not in the business of paying out money.
Solving this problem has been the biggest challenge we have faced, and I have personally dedicated countless hours to resolving it. Now through several acquisitions Nexus Dental Systems can offer a full suite of medical billing capabilities that will bring consistency to reimbursement.
Whether IN-Network or Out-Of-Network, this billing solution provides every one of our clients with a customized protocol and a clear pathway to optimal reimbursement. Our system includes comprehensive training for your team, proprietary and integrated billing software, and access to our billing network.
Teams need help for many reasons, but the common issues we have seen are poor understanding of the importance of dental sleep medicine, resistance to change, and lack of a clearly defined protocol supported by the dentist. The truth is that most dentists are extremely busy. No matter how many weekend courses, seminars, and online courses you have taken, it is unrealistic to think you can translate that into an actionable protocol for your office, and then train and mentor your whole team on it while maintaining a full dental patient load. There are too many processes, systems and details that need to be ironed out, and the team is already busy with their existing workload. There is no quick fix.
The solution is whole team training that includes custom protocol development and ongoing coaching. Someone who knows the systems and can create step-by-step guides for each team member based on the reality in your practice. This is exactly what N3Sleep was founded to address: fix these problems so dentists could help people and save lives. The N3Sleep team has experience with all the software, systems, and tools most dentists may have already purchased. The N3Sleep system is not a separate process added onto your existing workload, it is integrated directly into current protocols.
To succeed a dentist needs to reach the patients who need help. Your first sleep patients will come from your existing dental patients. They are already in your office; they just need screening and a referral for testing. Since 2016, DreamSleep has been creating informative and effective patient outreach materials for the dental office, social media channels and innovative screening events.
DentalPlay is the perfect complement: a vast library of informative and medically accurate 3D animations of sleep, oral surgery, cosmetic, implant, orthodontic and periodontic procedures. These are available for streaming to a tablet chairside or added to your office video system and customizable with your logo. On-demand access to these videos make your team be more effective when explaining procedures to patients
Why We
Do This
Over the years we have built this program to address the biggest challenges dentists face. Our goal has always been to create a sustainable and resilient system able to adapt to the constant drumbeat of change in this industry.
