The Mouth Is in the Body: Why Payers Need to Rethink the Dental-Medical Divide
We talk about healthcare as though it is one connected system, yet for too many patients, care remains split into separate medical and dental experiences with little connection between them.
So, what are we missing when we treat oral health as a separate benefit rather than an essential part of overall health?
That was one of the thought-provoking questions explored when Catalyst Solutions CEO Sas Mukherjee sat down with Helen Drexler, CEO of Delta Dental of Colorado, for the latest episode of Catalyst Conversations. Drexler summed up the case for greater integration in one simple observation: “The mouth is in the body.”
Drexler's perspective isn't theoretical. It's personal. Her son developed kidney failure at age 25 as a result of an autoimmune disease. Looking back, she believes that if his dentist had taken his blood pressure during routine dental visits, his condition might have been identified earlier. It’s a powerful example of something healthcare leaders increasingly recognize: the dental office can be another point of access to a person's overall health.
Her story was not the only example. Drexler shared how a hygienist working for Delta Dental of Colorado's foundation identified oral cancer in a patient, something that had not been detected elsewhere.
Experiences like these raise an important question for payers: What health signals are being seen in one part of the healthcare system that aren't being shared with another?
The challenge isn’t simply recognizing the relationship between oral and overall health but creating the infrastructure to act on it. Medical and dental care have historically developed as separate systems, with different education, workflows, data, and coding structures. As Drexler points out, dental plans don't yet have the same diagnosis-code infrastructure used in medical care, making it difficult to connect the data and demonstrate outcomes.
For payers, that creates a significant opportunity. Imagine being able to connect dental and medical information at the member level, not just to process claims, but to identify patterns, support earlier intervention, and better understand how preventive oral care influences overall health and cost. That is the shift from managing individual benefits to looking at the whole person. Drexler argues that bringing the two data sources together will be essential to demonstrating the connection between oral health and broader outcomes.
But integration isn’t just about data. It also means looking at how and where care is delivered. Drexler describes another challenge that health plans know well: access. Dental deserts (areas or populations with limited access to dental care) aren't limited to rural communities. Transportation, affordability, fear, and other barriers can prevent people from getting care even when a provider is nearby.
That’s why the answer isn't necessarily one new technology or one new care model. Delta Dental of Colorado has supported approaches ranging from school-based hygiene programs to mobile clinics and teledentistry. One particularly striking example is a mobile dental practice designed to serve people experiencing homelessness, bringing care directly into communities where traditional access models may not work.
The lesson for payers extends well beyond dentistry: better access may require bringing the system to the member, rather than expecting the member to navigate the system. And, as Drexler emphasizes, the right solution may look different from one community to another. There is no single answer to the complex access challenges facing healthcare.
The same idea —moving beyond fragmented pieces toward a more connected view of the individual—speaks to a much larger challenge facing healthcare. Drexler identifies the complexity of the U.S. healthcare system itself as one of its biggest challenges, including the lack of a continuous flow of information around the patient.
For health plans, the opportunity is to move beyond thinking about medical, dental, behavioral health, and other services as separate lines of business, and start asking how they work together to improve the health of the person at the center.
Because ultimately, the members don't experience healthcare in silos, and neither does the body.
Hear the Full Conversation
Explore the dental-medical connection along with healthcare innovation, health equity, access, leadership, culture, and the difficult choices required to build a sustainable healthcare organization in the latest episode of Catalyst Conversations.
