Azeem Mallick
Medical-dental integration isn’t a new idea. For years, organizations have pointed to the benefits of connecting oral health care with medical care. But despite widespread agreement, progress has not grown in a sustained or meaningful way.
“I just don’t think it has had the staying power,” says Azeem Mallick, Vice President of Enterprise Strategic Partners at CareQuest Institute. “Reprioritization of work, short-term funding, or pilots that don’t have the necessary runway have made it difficult for these efforts to last or scale.”
As a result, many medical-dental integration initiatives have not had the momentum needed to drive long-term, system-wide changes.
That’s something CareQuest Institute is addressing in 2026.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘We’ve been talking about this for a long time. Now we need to be doing more to create real, measurable impact,’” Mallick says.
We sat down with Mallick to talk about why CareQuest Institute is prioritizing medical-dental integration now — and how the organization is working to ensure these efforts have the scale and staying power to make a difference.
First, how are we defining medical-dental integration?
Medical-dental integration brings aspects of oral health care into traditional medical settings such as primary care, while also expanding the role of dental providers to include screenings and interventions for chronic conditions. It has the potential to improve outcomes, reduce inequities, and better serve communities that have historically struggled to access the care they need.
Why is this a priority for CareQuest Institute?
We continue to see rising rates of chronic disease that are directly linked to oral health — conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Those connections disproportionately affect populations that are already vulnerable, contributing to greater health inequities. At the same time, health care costs continue to rise, and changes in Medicaid benefit design and government programs are directly impacting the populations that need care the most.
We at CareQuest Institute sit in a unique position to address this. We have the ability to pilot and test new approaches, influence policies and systems, and we are well positioned to support other organizations that are advancing integration in their communities.
What, specifically, is CareQuest Institute doing to advance medical-dental integration in the US?
Our primary approach is working through partnerships and serving as a convener. We can’t do this work alone — and really, no single organization or entity can.
Because of the role CareQuest Institute plays in the market, our credibility, and our independence from many of the pressures other organizations face, we’re in a strong position to bring the right partners to the table. We are partnering with Innovaccer and Kno2, two health care technology companies. Through those partnerships, we want to develop and launch pilot programs in new and existing settings that can demonstrate results and be scaled — so they lead to broader impact, including policy change, Medicaid benefit design changes, and shifts in how both medical and dental professionals are trained. We don’t want to launch one-off projects or initiatives that only work if CareQuest Institute is directly involved.
Additionally, we are supporting broader infrastructure change. That includes interoperability and connectivity between medical and dental claims data, which makes it easier to understand longitudinal patient journeys — seeing both the oral health care and medical care a person receives over time.
Why are you optimistic about these two partnerships you mentioned?
What excites me most about the partnerships we have recently announced is how they move beyond point solutions to tackle the structural barriers that have long prevented oral health from being fully integrated into the broader health system. By working with Innovaccer to close medical–dental data gaps and with Kno2 to scale interoperable information exchange, CareQuest Institute is convening the right technology, clinical, and innovation partners to make collaboration practical, not just aspirational. These partnerships create shared infrastructure that enables providers, payers, and innovators to test solutions, align incentives, and act on real‑time insights. Together, they help remove fragmentation, advance whole-person care, and create the conditions for sustainable, system‑level change in how oral health is delivered, measured, and valued.
How does medical-dental integration specifically help underserved communities?
By increasing access. Marginalized communities often don’t have equitable access to both oral health care and broader medical care. Any opportunity where we can help bridge that gap and give patients a more holistic care experience is going to make a meaningful difference. Better information sharing between medical and dental settings also helps ensure patients receive improved access to care.
When a patient in an underserved community has a dental emergency, because they can’t access a dental or medical provider, they often end up in a hospital emergency department for an issue that could have been prevented altogether or addressed earlier in a different setting. Integration creates opportunities to reduce those avoidable visits.
Many patients also struggle with transportation, so minimizing the number of visits and types of care settings a patient has to navigate can improve both access and outcomes.
Integration also helps us take what’s proven to work in safety-net environments and extend those practices more broadly. Many FQHCs and safety-net hospitals have already shown how coordinated, integrated care can improve access and quality. Applying those same approaches in non-FQHC settings means more communities can benefit from the better outcomes we already know are achievable.
What outcomes does CareQuest Institute hope to achieve through improved medical-dental integration — for patients, providers, and the broader health system?
Broadly, we’re trying to improve whole-person care by integrating oral health interventions into medical settings — and medical interventions into oral health settings. The outcomes we’re working toward are better chronic disease outcomes, greater access to care, and more efficient care delivery.
For patients, if they can receive basic oral health screenings and support in settings such as their primary care office, home health services, or a safety-net hospital, providers can address needs sooner and keep problems from escalating.
For the health system, we want to strengthen preventive care infrastructure and improve quality outcomes — like reducing avoidable emergency department use and repeat visits for the same underlying problems. The goal is to identify needs earlier, so patients aren’t cycling through the system without getting to the root cause of their issue.
And for providers, our focus is practicality. We want to fit interventions into existing structures and workflows, while being mindful of how different providers are paid and incentivized. If we can help providers find efficiencies within what they’re already doing — and connect care across settings — we should see improvements in outcomes and a lower total cost of care over time.
Looking ahead, how do you hope integrated care will change the experience for patients and providers?
The big picture answer would be: Patients will no longer feel like their oral health care and general health care are siloed and segmented, and they will feel as though their overall health care is seamless.
In the short term, we would love to see advancements such as dental and medical providers having greater access to their patients’ broader health records. A dentist would be able to see more of their patients’ primary care claims, and a primary care provider would be able to see more of their dental claims. We also want patients in a dental setting to have access to things like blood pressure screenings, like what they’re used to seeing in a medical setting. And likewise, when they show up at their pediatrician’s office or primary care office, they’d get oral health assessments or screenings. We want patients to feel more like their care is connected between what’s in their mouth and what’s in the rest of their body, versus it feeling completely separate.
To learn more about medical-dental integration, go to our Medical-Dental Integration page on our website.