I appreciate your question, but I must clarify that the evidence provided does not address vertical integration in the dental industry specifically. The available literature discusses vertical integration in entirely different contexts—pediatric healthcare, medical education, anesthesiology, and general healthcare systems—but contains no relevant information about dental industry changes.
What the Evidence Actually Shows
The term "vertical integration" appears in the provided studies, but refers to:
- Public health frameworks for childhood toxic stress prevention, involving tiered interventions from universal preventions to targeted treatments 1
- Medical and dental education curricula, where content is integrated across learning years and organ system blocks 1, 2, 3
- Healthcare delivery systems in general medicine, with mixed outcomes on costs, efficiency, and quality 4, 5
- Multi-omics research methodologies for data integration 1
Limited Dental-Specific Context
Only two studies tangentially relate to dentistry:
- One describes educational integration in dental schools—how curriculum content is organized vertically across years of study, not business or industry structure 2, 3
- Another discusses care coordination between dental and medical services (medical professionals providing oral health screenings, dental hygienists in OB-GYN clinics), which represents interprofessional collaboration rather than vertical integration of dental businesses 6
The Critical Gap
None of the evidence addresses:
- Dental service organizations (DSOs) acquiring practices
- Corporate consolidation in dentistry
- Supply chain integration in dental care
- Insurance-provider vertical integration
- Practice management company structures
To properly answer your question about how vertical integration is changing the dental industry, I would need evidence specifically examining dental business models, market consolidation, DSO growth patterns, and their impact on access, quality, and costs in dentistry—none of which is present in the provided materials.