Dental Sleep Medicine: Bear or Bull?
I’m a recovering Dental Sleep Medicine cynic. For nearly 20 years, I’d heard the chatter about how oral appliances were going to supplant CPAP as the gold standard. As Sam Cooke sang, “A change gon’ come, oh yesss it will…” I called BULLSHIT. Supposedly E0486 was going to change everything. Dentists finally had an appropriate code to bill for oral appliance therapy. But Medicare didn’t publish the allowed amount. Eventually payors began paying for treatment, but the machinations of the medical payors proved too much for many dentists. Others bailed claiming that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. Back in…