The Next Frontier In Preventive Health Care? The Dentist’s Office

As the U.S. grapples with ongoing clinician shortages and a growing burden of chronic disease, a movement is underway to rethink how routine dental visits can help close the care gap.

Increasingly, dentists are screening patients for high blood pressure and diabetes, counseling them on tobacco cessation, reviewing their medications, and referring them for medical follow-up when they spot signs of potential health problems. This is part of a broader trend to extend care beyond the purview of the physician and to other healthcare professionals.

The premise behind the move: About 29 million people have a dental visit every year, but not a medical visit, according to the American Heart Association. If millions of Americans already spend an hour in a dental office in a chair, why not use that as an opportunity to do more for time- and cash-strapped patients? While about a third of people have expressed anxiety about the dentist in surveys, there’s a significant part of the population that loves the dentist and even wishes they could go more often. There are forums on Reddit and Quora dedicated to discussions of people who love the feeling of having clean teeth.

It might seem obvious, but integrations between medical and any other field (behavioral health, dental, vision, and so on) are always more challenging than it seems. And yet, this concept has been catching fire with health systems, insurers, academic dental institutions, and policymakers searching for new ways to expand access to preventive care, particularly for the most underserved populations.

The evolution can mirror what happened in retail pharmacies over the past two decades, notes Katie D’Amico, vice president of growth and innovation at CareQuest Innovation Partners. CareQuest Innovation Partners invests in oral health and worked with us last year on a market map and extensive analysis of the space. CareQuest’s 2026 Market Map Report takes an updated look at oral health innovation hot spots and opportunities, and the impacts of market forces. Pharmacies gradually became hubs for vaccinations, health screenings, and other primary care services, not just medications. It’s also reminiscent of barbershop-based programs like this one from NYU Langone that can reach people with hypertension early.

D’Amico says dental practices could follow a similar trajectory, but with one important advantage: Unlike pharmacies, where people go when they’re already sick to ask questions about acute needs, dental visits are already built around the concept of prevention, making them an ideal site for those dental clinicians to screen for additional health risks and connect patients to follow-up care. Likewise, the dentist’s office can reach a broader swath of the population than the barber shop, including young kids that are notoriously challenging to reach due to the high proportion on Medicaid.

In our view: The dental chair could be one of healthcare's largest untapped prevention channels. On a personal note for Chrissy, it was the dentist who first pointed out that I may have chronic sinusitis and that I should see an ENT. One surgery later, and it’s truly night and day for me in terms of my quality of life.