Starting with medical school and extending through nearly every aspect of the practice of medicine, from care delivery to insurance billing, the teeth are treated as if they are a separate part from the rest of our body. As any good dentist would tell you, this artificial separation is far from harmless, because oral health has a robust, two-way connection to systemic health. Medical-dental integration (MDI) offers an obvious, yet surprisingly rare, solution to this problem: medical and dental professionals sharing information and coordinating care with each other to improve the health of the population. Those that have taken this leap are reaping the financial, quality, and growth benefits, but too few organizations are taking advantage of MDI.  
 
The case MDI can make to overcome the deep-rooted inertia that has kept dentistry practicing separately from the rest of the medicine is strong and simple: 

What an integrated practice looks like can vary from basic co-location to holistic collaboration, but more integration tends to result in stronger benefits. 
 
To learn more about the budding field of MDI, we decided to talk to some experts in the field: