How DSOs Can Turn Scanners into Patient Acquisition Magnets

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Sleep Dentistry Has Been an Elusive High-Margin Service

Sleep dentistry represents a compelling financial opportunity hiding in plain sight for today’s growth-focused DSOs. While standard restorative procedures generate $250-400 per hour of chair time according to the American Dental Association’s Health Policy Institute, properly implemented sleep dentistry services deliver $900 – $1,000+ per hour—making it potentially the most profitable service line available to dental groups.

Despite this economic upside, fewer than 5% of dental practices currently capitalize on this opportunity. This provider gap represents an immediate path to patient growth and margin growth for DSOs seeking to leverage their existing infrastructure.

Why do only a fraction of dental offices succeed in sleep dentistry?

3 Underestimated Challenges to Succeeding in Sleep (Until Now)

Below are the systemic barriers that have prevented large-scale implementation of sleep services across dental groups:

1. Patients Require Extensive Education, Consideration and Time Before Committing to Treatment

Most people know very little about sleep apnea, and basically zero about oral appliance therapy (OAT). Those that do know about it still have to overcome the mental burden of obtaining a new medical diagnosis and committing to sleeping with something in their mouth every night for the rest of their lives. It’s no wonder the decision takes time and ample information.

On average, from the moment someone begins exploring sleep apnea solutions, it takes them over 3 months to finally decide to move forward. Education is needed to overcome a number of factors:

• Unawareness of the health risks of sleep apnea
• Preconceived notion of having to do a sleep study in a clinic or lab
• Assumption that a CPAP machine is the only treatment option
• Stigma associated with sleep apnea
• Uncertainty of costs

DSO Impact: It’s not realistic for dental offices to be staffed with team members who can remain engaged with patients after they’ve left the office over the span of several months to answer their questions and overcome their concerns. The consideration cycle is just too long and involved.

2. Complex Medical-Dental Collaboration Requirements

Unlike traditional dental services, sleep dentistry operates at the intersection of medical and dental care:

• Patients require a sleep study and diagnosis from a sleep physician within the past two years
• Cross-disciplinary case collaboration necessitates unfamiliar communication channels
• Follow-up sleep testing must be coordinated to validate treatment efficacy
• Clinical documentation must be seamlessly shared between sleep physicians and dental offices

DSO Impact: Establishing and maintaining collaborative care relationships across multiple practice locations in different geographic markets creates significant logistical overhead.

3. Medical Insurance Reimbursement Complexity

The financial complexity of medical billing presents perhaps the most significant barrier:

• Oral appliances are billed through medical insurance rather than dental benefits
• Each provider must individually secure in-network status with health insurers, a process that can take 3-6 months per provider, per insurer
• Different payers have varying documentation requirements and reimbursement rates
• Cash flow is impacted by longer reimbursement cycles

DSO Impact: It’s remarkably difficult to obtain network contracts with health insurance payors as a dental provider. This difficulty is magnified for multi-location groups operating across different states. In addition, the unpredictable cash flow from medical billing can disrupt financial planning and growth strategies for DSOs accustomed to more predictable dental insurance timelines.

Complete Sleep’s Patient Acquisition Solution: New Patients Ready to Make Your Office Their Dental Home

Complete Sleep has engineered a model that delivers to your offices fully educated, diagnosed, and eager sleep patients who simply require an oral exam and digital impression. Not only do you get a stream of these new patients to your office, you also get paid directly by Complete Sleep for the service. Best of all, a meaningful portion of these patients will make your office their new dental home. This workflow is tailored to make it easy for dentists to focus on what they do best while ignoring the rest.

Follow-up sleep apnea care is fully handled by Complete Sleep, as are the post-treatment sleep tests to ensure treatment efficacy. Complete Sleep’s obsession with expanding access to sleep dentistry is what led the former President of the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine to join the company as a Dental Advisor.

Below are the ways in which Complete Sleep handles the non-clinical load of sleep dentistry, so you don’t have to:

1. Multi-Channel Marketing and Communication with Patients

Prospective patients are first identified through Complete Sleep’s sophisticated efforts across search, social, streaming video, and third-party partnerships. Marketing to sleep patients requires a unique understanding of the psychological forces that hold a patient back. Furthermore, since sleep apnea is a condition that falls outside the context of oral health, it’s important to have sleep physicians ensure medical accuracy of all messaging with patients.

Complete Sleep guides patients through their entire consideration cycle, communicating with them through a myriad of phone, text, and email touchpoints. The cumulative time spent engaging with each patient can be 3-4 hours across those communication channels.

The DSO Advantage is that you can immediately add new patient flow and high-margin revenue without investing in marketing or training providers on the various ways to message patients on sleep apnea.

2. Collaborative Workflow with Sleep Physicians

Complete Sleep handles the entire diagnostic process through home sleep testing and a network of board-certified sleep physicians. Rather than requiring each DSO location to establish and maintain relationships with local sleep physicians — a process that typically takes 4-6 months per market — this already established network provides immediate coverage.

Standardized forms and templates ensure compliance with medical requirements. Collaborative care can be fraught with administrative headaches in trying to obtain the necessary documentation. Complete Sleep’s system eliminates the administrative burden.

The DSO Advantage is the ability to implement sleep dentistry with minimal disruption to existing clinical workflows.

3. End-to-End Revenue Cycle Management

From verification of benefits to prior authorizations, to claim submissions, the revenue cycle for sleep dentistry can be quite long and complicated. Complete Sleep handles it all. They also take on the lab fees and any insurance claim denials. You’ll get paid directly by Complete Sleep for each new patient you see for an oral exam and digital impression, plus you can become the patient’s dental home.

The DSO Advantage is the ability to capture high-margin revenue without any financial risk or administrative headache.

The Math Behind This Lucrative (and Easy) New Service Line

Here’s an estimate of the financial upside for a DSO that partners with Complete Sleep to accept their patients needing oral exams and scans:

Metric	Per Location
Cost to participate	$0
Total patients in the practice	1,500
Existing patients converted per month	6
New sleep patients per month	10
Total monthly sleep patients	16
Monthly revenue increase	$15,000
Annual revenue increase	$180,000
Revenue per hour of chair time	$937.50

 

There is Longer-Term Value for the Dental Office

Beyond the near-term sleep treatment revenue, these patients represent significant long-term value:

1. Comprehensive care needs: Many sleep patients haven’t received regular dental care in years and require a dental home.
2. Higher treatment acceptance: Sleep patients who experience life-changing results from their appliance develop strong trust in their dental provider.
3. Strong referral potential: Patients who sleep better become enthusiastic advocates for both sleep treatment and comprehensive dental care.
4. Family conversion: Sleep patients are typically heads of households and can pull their immediate family into the practice as well.

Strategic Advantages for Forward-Thinking DSOs

Implementing Complete Sleep’s patient acquisition model across a portfolio of offices offers several strategic advantages:

1. Untapped patient demographic: Access patients who aren’t currently seeking dental care and may not have visited a dentist in years.
2. Reduced marketing dependency: Diversify patient acquisition beyond traditional dental marketing channels.
3. Enhanced practice differentiation: Become known as the dental group that “helps people sleep better,” creating unique brand positioning.
4. Competitive moat: Early adopters in sleep dentistry often dominate their markets before competitors enter.

Here’s How to Learn More

Schedule a DSO Strategy Session to receive:

• Projections based on your practice locations and patient demographics
• Training and implementation timeline
• Anticipated workflow between you and Complete Sleep

➡️SCHEDULE YOUR DSO STRATEGY SESSION⬅️

References

[1] American Dental Association Health Policy Institute. “2023 Survey of Dental Practice: Income, Gross Billings, and Expenses.” ADA, 2023.

[2] Levine, Harold B., et al. “Economic Benefits of Dental Sleep Medicine Implementation in Dental Practice Settings.” Journal of Dental Sleep Medicine, vol. 9, no. 2, 2022, pp. 1-8.

[3] American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine. “Guide to Medical Billing for Dental Sleep Medicine.” AADSM, 2022.

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