Putting Data to Work in Dentistry: Deploy EHRs in Dentistry to Transform Systemic Care

The last few decades have seen an explosion in the medical community’s understanding of the Mouth- Body Connection. Researchers are finding that poor oral health is linked to cancer, heart disease, dementia, and low birth weight. With oral health clearly contributing to systemic health, it has never been more important for dentists and doctors to communicate and optimize patient care.

How do both sets of providers get that conversation started? Through electronic health record (EHR) platforms. Though adoption started slowly, more than 89 percent of hospitals and medical practices now use EHRs such as Epic, allowing them to input, store and share patients’ records among providers.

By adopting Epic or other EHRs, dental practices can “speak the same language” as their patients’ doctors and specialists. This brings dentists into dialogue with doctors, allowing both to share and access critical information about patients in their care.

When put into practice, this conversation can improve outcomes and save lives. For example, dentists are often the first to suspect diabetes or prediabetes based on changes in a patient’s gum health and tooth decay. A study out of Maryland found that when dentists have access to a patient’s medical records, they can help identify patients with diabetes early, jump-starting the preventions that can improve patient outcomes.

Similarly, researchers have found that women who enter labor early were 45 percent more likely to have gum disease than women who carried babies to full term. As preterm birth is the leading cause of infant mortality, the ability to share information about gum disease with OB/GYNs could save lives.

In the case of dementia, tooth loss can be a warning sign. Older adults who are missing teeth have an increased risk of developing dementia—and the risk rises with each missing tooth. Primary care providers who can access their older patients’ dental records might be able to identify warning signs early in a person’s cognitive decline when treatments can be most effective at slowing the progress of the disease.

Cancer’s effect on oral health is well established – sores, dry mouth, tooth loss, and pain often accompany chemotherapy and other cancer treatments. Less often discussed is the way that oral health increases a person’s risk for certain types of cancer. People who have gum disease have a 43 percent increased risk of developing esophageal cancer and a 52 percent higher risk of developing stomach cancer than people with healthy gums.

Here, again, two-way communication has the potential to identify high-risk patients early and monitor for subtle signs of declining health. Identifying and treating the disease early not only increases patients’ chance of survival but can improve their quality of life.

Many dental practices already employ electronic dental records, but full integration of medical and dental records is critical. Dental practices that have adopted EHR platforms now have the ability to access relevant patient health history.

For example, Pacific Dental Services (PDS) recently became the first dental support organization in the world to complete the integration of Epic into all of its nearly 900 dental offices. The dentists supported by PDS can now provide comprehensive, coordinated care with their patient’s primary care providers (PCP) through a shared data set, and PCPs can share pertinent information with dentists to enable both to better treat their shared patients.

When it comes to health, the mouth “talks” to the body and vice versa, through the adoption of EHRs, dentists and medical care providers can be in on that conversation together.